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I 

MANHOOD-CRUSHING- MANACLES 





Fig. 1. Neck, Wrist, and Ankle-Stocks. 2. Sole-Leather Paddle. 3. Pillory, or Half-bent 
Stocks. 4. Barrel Punishment. 5. Flogging Stakes. 6. Spread-Eagle Pole. 

















































































INSIDE VIEWS 


OP 


Slavery on Southern Plantations. 



JOEHST ROLES, 

For twenty-five years a resident of the South, and for ten years an overseer on some of the 

largest cotton plantations. 


WITH AN-INTRODUCTION 

BY 

NATHAN BROWN, 

Corresponding Secretary of the Am. Bap. Free Mission Society. 



NEW-YORK: 

JOHN A. GRAY & GREEN, PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS, 16 & 18 JACOB STREET. 

Fire-proof Buildings. 









INTRODUCTION. 


To understand Slavery we must look at it from several points of view. We 
have had many accounts of its horrors, viewed as the poor sufferer views them; 
the narratives of those who have felt the iron in their souls, and whose testi¬ 
mony is invaluable as a plain record of individual sorrows. We have por¬ 
traitures also from the pens of talented authors, who have taken the meager 
skeletons furnished by sufferers and eye-witnesses, and have dressed them up in 
the imagery of life, throwing over them sinew and muscle, flesh and blood-hue, 
and that freshness which fiction so well knows how to impart. Mrs. Stowe 
gave us Uncle Tom's Cabin , unrivaled for its judicious admixture of light and 
shade, relieving the harrowing details of the main story by genial and attractive 
episodes, and sweet lessons of negro piety learned in the school of suffering. 
Mr. Hildreth’s White Slave was perhaps even more faithful, as a delineation of 
Southern life, than the work of Mrs. Stowe; but the picture was so black, the 
characters so revolting, the scenes so absolutely diabolical, that few could endure 
the perusal, and hence its circulation was comparatively small. On the econom¬ 
ical question, the careful work of Helper is all that could be desired. 

But we still needed to view the subject from the standing-point of the 
master himself, or of the driver, who carries out the owner’s wishes in the 
systematic torture of human nerves. Here was a riddle, a wantonness of 
cruelty that seemed.so totally at variance with the ordinary instincts of human¬ 
ity, as to create a doubt of the fairness and correctness of the testimony. The 
narrative of the poor fugitive shed little or no light on the motives of the master 
or overseer; their conduct seemed inexplicable; there was, in many cases, - 
nothing but the gratuitous infliction of pain without any apparent object, save 
the infernal delight of seeing a fellow-being suffer. 

The narrative of Mr. Roles solves the mystery. It explains the theory and 
working of the slave-system as it has been explained by no other writer. The 
secret springs that move both master and slave are here unfolded. Mr. Roles 
shows us slave-driving as a science. Like every other successful overseer, he 
had reduced the rules of his profession to a system. Nothing was done from 
passion; every thing was the result of deliberate calculation. With the over¬ 
seer, slave-driving is simply a business; he has one standard by which every 
thing is measured; how to make the largest profits is the only problem he has 
to solve. To make slavery profitable, it has long since been ascertained that 
man must be converted into a machine; a passive instrument; an intelligent yet 
unresisting thing ; human powers and faculties without a human will, or rather 
with a will completely guided and molded by the will of another. 

To bring a human being into this condition of perfect servitude, great 
cruelty is necessary. Especially is this the case with slaves sent southward 
from the Border States, whose spirits hpve not been thoroughly broken before 



iv 


INTRODUCTION. 


arriving at manhood. In the province of Assam, on the northern frontier of 
India, some two thousand wild elephants are captured annually and trained to 
become beasts of burden. These huge animals are lured by decoy elephants 
into concealed pits, whence, having once fallen, they are utterly powerless to 
escape. The prey being fairly secured, the hunters commence a course of sys¬ 
tematic torture, chiefly by starvation, which is kept up till the spirit of the 
noble beast is completely crushed, and he becomes a mere tool in the hand of 
his keeper. The gigantic brute, recently roaming the forest in all his pride and 
independence, is now so thoroughly subdued that lie needs no bit or bridle 
for guidance or restraint; with lamb-like docility he obeys even the slightest 
motion of his driver, and cringes submissive beneath the iron goad that is too 
often mercilessly plunged into his scarred head. Some conception of the suffer¬ 
ing it costs to transform these animals into passive instruments of man’s will 
may be drawn from the fact that two thirds of them die in the training. 

But how dreadful to think that the same principle should be applied to 
human beings, requiring the crushing out of heart and soul, desire and hope, in 
order to convert man into a machine for the use of his brother man! Yet this 
is precisely what slavery does. We learn from the narrative of Mr. Roles, that 
no man can succeed as an overseer, who does not understand the art of crush¬ 
ing out the slave’s manhood, and transforming him into the image of the brute. 
A humane driver, who compromises the interests of his employer, from motives 
of compassion to the slave, will soon find that he has undertaken to combine 
things totally incompatible; that the intense strain of labor necessary to the 
production of a heavy cotton crop can not be kept up without the powerful 
stimulus of the lash and the stocks; that he must either sacrifice all the kindly 
feelings of his nature, or else give up his business. Mr. Roles, after his conver¬ 
sion, chose the latter. He saw what every man sees, and* what every honest 
man confesses, that to indulge the Christian’s hope or make the Christian’s pro¬ 
fession, while trampling on the rights of a brother man, would be rank hypoc¬ 
risy in the sight of Heaven. Against the remonstrances of his friends, who 
told him that now he had the opportunity to show how a Christian overseer 
could perform the duties of his calling, he abandoned a lucrative position, and 
rendered himself an object of dislike and suspicion. 

Since leaving the South, Mr. Roles has devoted himself to plans for the free- 
labor cultivation of cotton in Africa, the West-Indies, and Central America. 
In his narrative we have abundant evidence of his strict and most scrupulous 
adherence to facts. No one, indeed, can peruse it without perceiving that it is 
the statement of an honest, truthful man. The only vail thrown over the actors 
in the scenes here described is the suppression of their names, an initial or final 
letter being used instead. Mr. Roles has given us, in a separate paper, the full 
name of each individual; many of them we discover as extensive landholders 
in the maps and sketches sent from our army and published in the papers during 
the operations of Generals * Grant and Banks in Louisiana and Mississippi. 
As these sketches were written before the great rebellion, there is of course no 
allusion to that event; but the facts here stated throw a flood of light on the 
causes, motives, and interests which have precipitated one of the greatest, most 
fearful, and wanton wars ever waged against humanity. 


INTRODUCTION. 


Y 


Slavery has at length borne its legitimate fruit. It was introduced for the 
sake of gain; it has ended in terrible loss. Instead of being a mine of wealth, 
it has cost the nation hundreds of thousands of lives, and tens of hundreds of 
millions of treasure. It has been a speculation, on a grand scale, in the tears, 
blood, and souls of men; and the results are so deplorable that the experiment 
will probably never be repeated. May the last relic and trace of the diabolical 
system be speedily removed from our land and from the world! 

The following credentials will show the character and standing of Mr. Roles, 
at the time he left the South, among those with whom he had been connected. 

“ The First Baptist Church of Natchez send Christian salutation to any 
sister church. 

“ Dear Brethren : The bearer, Mr. John Roles, is a member in good and 
full fellowship with this church, and upon request has this day been dismissed 
by letter, and when united to another church, our particular watch-care over 
him will cease. We take pleasure in commending Brother Roles to your 
Christian regard and fellowship, as worthy to receive the same; and we fer¬ 
vently pray that when he shall have united with the church of his choice, the 
relation may be mutually pleasant and profitable. 

“ In behalf of and by order of the church. 

“ Done at special meeting, first Sabbath in March, 1854. 

“ Ira Carpenter, Church Clerk.” 

“ We, the undersigned, residents of the city of Natchez, Mississippi, and its 
vicinity, take pleasure in certifying that Mr. John Roles has been residing in 
this vicinity upwards of twenty years ; that during that time he has been em¬ 
ployed in many positions of responsibility, by various persons, and by some of 
the undersigned; and that upon all occasions he has conducted himself as a man 
of the strictest honesty and integrity. 

“ W. R. C. Vernon, of Parish of Concordia, La. 

“ James Collins, Natchez. 

“P. H. McGraw. 

“ E Profilet. 

“ Frederick Stanton. 

“Natchez, Miss., Feb. 1857.” 

“ I am personally acquainted with all the parties whose names are signed to 
the above recommendation, and entire reliance can be placed on their state¬ 
ments. 

“ S. B. Newman, of Buckner, Stanton & Newman. 

“ New-Orleans, Feb. 21, 1857.” 

“Her Britannic Majesty’s Consulate ) 
for the State of Louisiana. ) 

“ Know all persons to whom these presents shall come : That I, William 
Mure, Esq., her Britannic Majesty’s Consul for the city and district of New- 
Orleans, do hereby certify that S. B. Newman, Esq., whose signature is attached 
to the annexed document, is a gentleman of good standing and repute in this 
city, and that to his statement in relation thereto full faith and credit can be 
given. 

“Given under my hand and seal of office, at the city of New- 
Orleans, in the State of Louisiana, the United States of 
[l. s.] America, the 21st day of February, one thousand eight 

hundred and fifty-seven. 

“ Wm. Mure, H. B. M. Consul.” 



COINS CURRENT IN SLAYEDOM. 





Fig. 7. Bell Irons. 8. Overseer’s Whip. 9. Gag. 10. Rawhide Switch. 11. Stiff Leg. 
12 . Iron Neck-Collar. 13. Coupling Chain. 14. Buck’s Horns. 15. Iron Horns. 
















INSIDE VIEWS OF SLAVERY 


ON 



0wt|ern plantations 

BY AN OLD OVERSEER. 


♦ 


INSIDE VIEWS OF SLAVERY. 

CHAPTER I. 

Preliminary Remarks. 

Is American slavery a beneficent insti¬ 
tution ? This is the great issue that now 
divides the American people. The Co¬ 
lumbus (S. C.) jReview says : “ Slavery 

is undoubtedly good, and only good.” 
“ I repel the charge of cruelty,’’ says the 
Rev. Dr. Wilson, of Baltimore. So far 
from being an evil, a relic of barbarism, 
as has often been alleged, we hear the 
highest encomiums bestowed upon it, as 
a blessing to both master and servant; 
the corner stone of our political edifice; 
the most perfect type of civilization ; en¬ 
titled to the fostering care of both 
Church and State; marking a state of so¬ 
cial blessedness, if we are to believe its 
brazen-faced advocates, more nearly re¬ 
sembling Paradise than anything enjoyed 
on earth since Adam’s Paradise was lost. 

The friends of truth need not be alarm¬ 
ed at such arrogant pretensions; they are 
an indication of encouraging progress in 
the investigation of truth. Its victory 
over error is more than half achieved 
when the issue is thus distinctly present¬ 
ed ; when the enemy, driven from his 
hiding place, exposes himself in the open 
field of public debate, to a force that al 
ways conquers. 

Slavery is now on trial before a jury of 
the whole American people, who may be 
relied on to give a righteous verdict in 
the case, if the truth and the whole truth 
can be fairly brought before them. Nor 
is the investigation a doubtful one. The 
public have only to see slavery as it is, to 
decide on its character. If it is a benefi¬ 
cent institution, its fruit will show it; if 


sin and misery are its legitimate fruits, 
that also can be shown. “ How long halt 
ye then between two opinions ?” If free¬ 
dom is a blessing, follow it; but if slavery, 
then follow it. 

Having been for ten years a prac¬ 
tical overseer, and as such, familiar with 
the revolting scenes within the walls of 
this American prison house, I have had 
opportunity to learn the true character 
of slavery, to an extent which no other 
school is able to teach it. Trained in this 
seminary to slave-driving, rather than 
driving the quill, and to using the cogent 
logic of the lash, rather than that of the 
schools, I must rely on facts atone to rebut 
the bold assertions of pro slavery advo¬ 
cates. If I have not the power which lite¬ 
rary culture imparts, I can put a tongue in 
ten thousand mouths, made in the slave’s 
bleeding flesh by dogs and the lash, and 
bid them speak for me. 

As a continuous history of my twenty- 
five years’ experience and observation 
would comprise a tedious repetition of 
similar scenes, I shall adduce specimens 
only, such as will present a fair represen¬ 
tation of what is constantly done on the 
best regulated plantations, the discipline 
of which is conducted on cool, business 
principles, where the manager is careful 
not to injure the productive value of his 
working stock by short feeding, or “ giv¬ 
ing a lick too much”—a fatality which 
does sometimes unhappily occur, without 
design; where the driver’s crowding and 
flogging are to him not a pastime, but a 
business necessity, designed simply to 
make his slaves profitable. 

In relating facts, I shall scrupulously 
aim to avoid all exaggeration, and state 
nothing which I am not willing to affirm 





2 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


under oath; facts which I can corrobo¬ 
rate by reference to the particular times, 
places, and persons connected with their 
occurrence, a private register of which will 
be preserved for the purpose, if such cor¬ 
roboration should ever be required. In 
repeat ng from memory the utterances of 
individuals, exact verbal accuracy will not, 
of course, be expected. 

My experience as an overseer has open¬ 
ed to my mind some important things 
relative to slavery in our country, which 
are seldom learned in any other school. 
It has taught me, first, that the cruelties 
practiced on the plantation are very par¬ 
tially known, even at the South. Nor is 
it strange that it should be so. How lit¬ 
tle does the swarming population of a 
large city know of what is done and suf¬ 
fered within the walls of the Penitentiary 
planted in their midst, or in the ten thou¬ 
sand abodes of wretchedness and vice that 
surround them ! As little can the out¬ 
siders of a cotton plantation be expected 
to know what is going on within, especial¬ 
ly when such disclosures are suppressed 
by gag law, which either the slave or 
white employee violates at his peril. The 
slave-owner himself is not an exception to 
this remark. So long as his overseer gives 
him a good crop, it is for the comfort, 
both of his heart and conscience, to know 
as little as possible of the anguish from 
which it was wrung out for him. To flog 
the slaves in his presence, or in the pres¬ 
ence of strangers, would be an offensive 
breach of politeness, and for the same rea¬ 
son he w T ould not have his overseer render 
to him any account of his floggings, ex¬ 
cept when necessary. Much less would 
he have the tender sensibilities of his fam¬ 
ily tortured with the relation of such re¬ 
volting scenes. Hence there is necessarily 
a profound ignorance of the true charac¬ 
ter of slavery, both North and South; 
and the northern traveler who thinks to 
stop the mouths of anti-slavery croakers, 
by publishing the results of his extensive 
observations at the South, is simply a 
“ traveled fool,’’ as my narrative will 
show. 

Nor will the slave himself expose the 
miseries of his condition. Oppression al¬ 
ways makes sycophants of its victims, 
whose fear renders them the more obse- I, 


quious to their oppressor, and the more 
prompt to do his will, the more cruelly 
they are crushed by his power. It is cu¬ 
rious to see with what alacrity slaves will 
perform for the overseer all the drudgery 
of slave government, capturing fugitives, 
betraying their hiding-places, reporting 
their complaints, threats, discontents, or 
plots, and doing all the flogging and field¬ 
driving for him. He has only to give the 
word, and they are “ swift to do his will.” 

It is not the love of domineering, or the 
want of compassion for their suffering 
companions, so much as sample fear that 
prompts them to this se vice. The same 
fear of the lash that stimulates the laborer, 
nerves also the arm that wields it. It is 
the same fear that compels recreant 
Northerners, when settled at the South, 
to be foremost in persecuting their own 
kin, suspected of abolitionism, in order t,o 
screen themselves, if possible, from a like 
suspicion and persecution. To suppose 
that a slave, in constant fear of torture, 
will speak of his wrongs to his oppressor’s 
friend, or express discontent with his lot, 
and thus expose himself to double ven¬ 
geance, is simply absurd. 

Second. My slave driving experience 
has further taught me that cruelty is an 
essential element of slave-government, 
even on the best regulated plantations— 
that the blood-extorting lash is the life 
blood of the system. Those who think it 
can be dispensed with, mistake both the j 
nature ofslavery and of slave government. 

I labored under the same mistake myself, 
until I was led to realize that the peculiar j 
condition of the slave rendered the cruel¬ 
ty of the lash a necessary incentive to 
obedience and activity. • The slave is re¬ 
quired to put forth his utmost energies 
from early dawn till the darkness of night 
shuts down upon him. This is the law of 
the cotton plantation. To expect him to 
obey it without a stimulus, is to look for 
an effect without an adequa e cause. La¬ 
bor demands a stimulus. The stimulus of 
the freeman is gain, or the hope of it; that i 
of the slave, the lash, or the fear of it. 
Take away the stimulus of wages, the 
hope of gain, the necessities of a de¬ 
pendent family, provision against future 
want, and you have left him no motive, 
within his own bosom, for earnest exer- 









Inside Views of Slavery. 


3 


tion. The only motive he can feel is that I 
which is applied to his quivering flesh. It 
is not his nature, it is the condition to 
which slavery has reduced him, that 
makes the stimulus of the lash indispens¬ 
able. 

And yet this very condition has become 
a stereotyped pro-slavery argument at 
the South. To be relieved from the care 
of a dependent family, and of providing 
against future wants, and of procuring 
physician and medicine in sickness, by a 
ma-ter who assumes all this care himself, 
is often spoken of as an enviable condi 
tion ; as if it were the perfection of the 
slave’s felicity to extinguish his domestic 
affections by relieving him of the care that 
cherishes them, and thus take away all 
moral incentives to labor, and render the 
torture of the lash an indispensable sub 
stitute! 

Husbands and fathers, you have only 
to commit your tender charge to the pro¬ 
tection of a slave master, and he will feed, 
and clothe, and doctor them for you, work 
and drive, and flog them to your heart’s 
content, and, if cupidity or necessity re¬ 
quire, sell them forever out ot your sight 
and hearing, and thus insure you against 
all future care of them. Who does not 
see that this boasted felicity of the slave’s 
condition is one of the inherent abomina¬ 
tions of the system, showing that in its 
brighest aspects it is only evil, and that 
continually. What aggravates the case, 
this moral destitution is, on the other 
hand, urged in justification of the cruelties 
inflicted on him. He is so perversely in¬ 
dolent, it is alleged, that nothing but the 
fear of the lash will make him work. 
Rob him of all the kindly impulses of his 
nature, and then reproach him and tor¬ 
ture his flesh because he is incapable of 
being moved by those impulses. 

Third. Those who think cruelty is not 
essential to slave government, because it 
is extensively dispensed with among house 
servants, and in the border slave States, 
are ignorant of the motive that restrains 
these favored slaves. The Southern plan 
tation is a house of correction for every 
refractory slave in all the slave Sta es, the 
influence of which is felt to the uttermost 
bounds of the slave empire. The horrors 
of the cotton plantation are a subject of 


universal dread among slaves. If disobe¬ 
dient or thriftless, they know their doom ; 
the slave trader is about, ready to pur¬ 
chase and transport them to a region 
where their insubordination will be effect¬ 
ually whipped out of them. Abolish the 
whipping and driving cruelties of the 
plantation, and you abolish slave govern¬ 
ment everywhere. 

Nor is the lord of the lash, the immedi¬ 
ate agent of this cruelty, to be accounted 
a sinner above all others connected with 
the system. Crowding and flogging are 
to him a necessity. He must either hard¬ 
en his heart for the rigorous execution of 
this duty, or quit his employment; for 
leniency to the slaves will bring his em¬ 
ployer no cotton. To make slave labor 
profitable, the stimulus of the whip must 
be vigorously and cruelly applied. Of all 
the numerous cotton plantations which 
have come under my cognizance, I have 
yet to find the first, solitary one that could 
dispense with this necessary incentive. 
Besides, the overseer’s severity, as we 
have shown, is the basis of the whole fa¬ 
bric of slave government; he is an execu¬ 
tive official of slave law, no less necessary 
than judges, marshals, and sheriffs are for 
the execution of State laws. If slave gov¬ 
ernment is right, as the ministers of both 
law and Gospel teach us, then the revolt¬ 
ing inflictions of those officials, which are 
the main pillars of such government, are 
right. They simply do the bidding of 
those reverends and honorables who just¬ 
ify and cherish the system. Let the cen¬ 
sure fall, then, without respect to persons, 
on these higher officials, as well as their 
humbler subordinates. 

Every reverend advocate of the cruel 
system who pleads the sanction of the 
Bible in its support, inflicts more stripes 
upon its tortured victims than a whole 
army of overseers. His pretended pro¬ 
clamation of God’s word and will nerves 
the arm of the slave driver, and furnishes 
him the authority he wants to exercise 
his cruel function. I have often heard 
the hardened infidel slave driver taunt¬ 
ingly boast of this authority to his slave 
church member, as he was laying on the 
lash, using language too horribly blas¬ 
phemous to repeat, and seeming to delight 
in such an opportunity to curse Christian* 





4 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


ty, its Author, its teachers, and its pro¬ 
fessors. 

Admit that overseers are a most de¬ 
praved class of men, steeped in such Vices 
as swearing, driving, fighting, and the 
most barefaced licentiousness. Admit, 
also, that such depravity deserves no 
palliation or excuse. What then ? Are 
they the only persons implicated in the 
guilt ? This vile offspring has a respon¬ 
sible parentage. Who nurtures the tree 
that brings forth such evil fruit? Not 
the cruelties only, but the vices of the 
overseer, which his profession cherishes, 
may be justly fathered upon the teacher 
of a religion that spreads the segis of its 
sanction over this prolific mother of abom 
inations. 

These things premised, I propose to 
enter on the details of my narrative in 
subsequent numbers. 


CHAPTER II. 

Hardening Influences. 

“ Vice is a monster of sQch hideous mien, 

That to be hated, needs but to be seen; 

But seen too oft, familiar with her face, 

"We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” 

To no vice can these lines of Cowper be 
more truthfully and. emphatically applied 
than to that of slaveholding oppression, 
as my own sad experience can bear wit¬ 
ness. On this principle alone can I ac¬ 
count for the fact that millions of hu¬ 
mane and liberty-loving people of this 
nation, multitudes of them professing a 
religion whose fundamental law is love, 
can tolerate in our midst .that atrocious 
system of chattelism, under which four 
millions of our fellow-citizens and human 
brethren are now groaning. Nor is it 
strange that those who overlook the hard¬ 
ening effect, upon the heart and con¬ 
science, of familiarity with crime and 
cruelty, should denounce our political and 
religious pretensions, and professed sym 
pathy with the oppressed of other nations 
as shameless hypocrisy ; and that the op¬ 
pressive governments of Europe should 
tauntingly admonish us to “ pluck the 
beam from our own eye , 55 before we pre¬ 
sume to interfere with that infinitely 


milder form of oppression which they 
practice. 

But while experience has taught me 
more of the atrocities of the vile system 
than the masses, either North or South, 
ever dreamed of, it has taught me also a 
lesson of forbearance, my own mind hav¬ 
ing passed through the same hardening 
process which the poet so accurately de- 
cribes. When I first saw the lash ap¬ 
plied to the writhing victim, heard the 
savage oaths of the time-hardened driver, 
and the pitiful cries of the poor slave, beg¬ 
ging for mercy of one who knows no 
mercy, and whose interest forbade him to 
show it; his unfeeling jeers over the in¬ 
tense agony of the prostrate sufferer, ris¬ 
ing upon his toes at every lick, to increase 
its cruel force, and “ let the claret out of 
the infernal nigger the sight filled me 
with horror, my blood boiled with indig¬ 
nation, and with clenched fist and gnash¬ 
ing teeth, I longed to wreak vengeance 
on the incarnate demon, never dreaming 
that underithe same malign influences I 
should one day be found reenacting the 
same cruelties. Had some propbetie 
monitor warned me of this at that time, 
my heart would have indignantly replied, 
in the language of Hazael to the prophet 
Elisha, ’‘Is thy servant a dog, that he 
should do this great thing ?” No amount 
of money would then have tempted me 
thus to flog a poor helpless slave. 

The scene to which I here allude was 
on'the plantation of a Mr. L., of Louisia j 
na, in the autumn of 1833, where I was j 
employed as a mechanic. This was the i 
first year of my residence in a slave State. | 
I had removed the spring previous from 
central Ohio to Natchez, impelled by the j 
same sad necessity which has caused 
many a northern invalid to seek the sani- j 
tary influence of a milder climate 
It was in Natchez Mr. L. found me ; ! 
and being pleased with specimens of my J 
workmanship which he witnessed, engag- j 1 
ed me in his service. His plantations— , 
he owned three separate ones, managed 
by as many overseers—were on the Mis- 1 
sissippi, north of Red river. This section , 
of the State was the field of my observa¬ 
tion and experience. Mr. L. w r as a man ! 
of standing, extensively known and re¬ 
spected in that community as an intelli- ;' 









Inside Views of Slavery. 


5 


gent and prosperous planter, who treat¬ 
ed his slaves well, according to southern 
ideas of good treatment—that is, kept 
them in good working condition, and did 
not break them down and injure their 
productive value, as bad managers some¬ 
times do, by short feeding or excessive 
driving. 

Here I learned, for the first time, what 
slavery is; what six months’ residence in 
Natchez had given me no conception of. 
I had every day seen the negro cowering 
and trembling under the frowns of super¬ 
cilious masters, without daring to utter a 
breath of remonstrance against such in¬ 
dignities. But the incidents of slavery 
were “trifles light as air,” compared with 
that cold-hearted and systematic torture 
which is an essential element of planta¬ 
tion discipline. The impression made on 
my mind by the first flogging scene I 
witnessed on Mr. L.’s plantation, the 
lapse of thirty years has not been able 
to efface. I seem to hear, at this mo¬ 
ment, the terrific crack of the overseer’s 
heavy whip; I see the struggling vie 
tims stretched out on the ground, face 
downward, receiving their hundred lash¬ 
es each, laid on with all the force which 
the driver’s strong and practiced arm 
would command; I hear their piteous 
cries for mercy, as the lash came down 
upon their naked flesh, and the driver’s 
unfeeling curses and savage glee over 
their sufferings, expressed in language too 
foul and blasphemous to be repeated. I 
would like to have had some of our pro¬ 
slavery reverends listen, for once, to the 
dialogue I heard on the occasion referred 
to, and then see if they could repel the 
charge of cruelty, and pronounce slavery 
“ good, and only good.” 

“Oh! pray, massa ! Do ! pray ! Do, 
massa, pray ! dis time! O, my God ! 
Lord help dis slave! O, my massa! we 
could not help it—we could not, my mas¬ 
sa. Dem young oxen break down de 
fences, massa; dat am truff—dat it am, 
massa.” 

The driver, meanwhile, laying on the 
lash and belching out oaths and obscen¬ 
ity, tells them, “The oxen had no business 
to break down the fence, and get away 
with their yokes on. Business must go 
ahead all the time, and must never go a 


lick back, so long as I manage this plan¬ 
tation. If it does, Mr. Nigger’s hide must 
pay the penalty. Do you hear that, Mr. 
Niggers ?” 

“ Yes, massa, we hear dat; and your 
business sha’n’t go any licks back, dat it 
sha’n’t, massa, if dese niggers can help 
it.” 

“Gather up your clothes, then, and 
strike a trot until those oxen are brought 
back from the stock range.” 

“Yes, massa, yes—thankee; we bring 
him back, quick,”’ answered the negroes, 
frightened into alacrity. 

These two slaveswere thus cruelly flog¬ 
ged, because two yoke of young oxen 
had broken down the ox-lot fence during 
the night, and returned to the cattle 
range. 

No cruelty in slavery! “Good, and 
only good !” 

This driver would, to a stranger, ap¬ 
pear to be the victim of uncontrollable 
rage ; but it was not so ; it was policy, not 
passion, that governed him. His object 
was to stimulate the fear of his slaves to 
the highest point of efficiency. Enter 
into private conversation with him, even 
while he is affecting all this rage and fury 
towards his slaves, and you will find him 
perfectly bland and unexcited. More 
than that, this savage overseer might 
have been taken for a model gentleman 
of the southern school, intelligent, digni¬ 
fied, affable, of polished manners, genial, 
courteous, generous and hospitable. In 
his profession, he ranked No. 1; command¬ 
ed a salary of $1500 hy his wise and effi¬ 
cient management ; won the respect of a 
wide circle of cotton growing acquaint¬ 
ances ; and was extensively quoted, and 
gazetted even, for his model plantation 
and model management. If the reader 
should know how he acquired so amiable 
a reputation, I have only to refer him to 
scenes similar to the one above described, 
as prominent among the causes that built 
him up. Had he been a lenient or indul¬ 
gent slave-driver, his fame and his fortune 
would have come up minus. As a man 
of business, shrewdness and energy, he 
understood this well, and was unwilling 
to sacrifice his interest to his humanity. 
Hence his cruelties are to be fathered 
upon the system rather than upon the man. 






6 


Lstside Views of Slavery. 


CHAPTER III. 

Daily Routine, 

It was the cotton-gathering season, and 
I often went out on the plantation at 
night, to witness the weighing and sum¬ 
ming up of the day’s work. The follow¬ 
ing is a description of the first scene of 
the kind I witnessed. 

When the overseer reached the place 
for weighing, he called out to the black 
driver, who was following his gang, whip 
in hand, ‘‘Bring in the cotton.” Instant¬ 
ly I saw the slaves hurrying up to their 
baskets, and emptying their sacks into 
them. Two or three wagons were on the 
turn-row, ready to receive the cotton 
when weighed. The black driver adjust 
ed the scales, and then called out, “ All 
ready, sir.” Several slaves immediately 
jumped into the large wagon bed, made 
for carting cotton, to empty the baskets 
and tramp down the cotton. One slave 
with a lantern seated himself on the side 
of the wagon to examine the baskets as 
they were emptied, to see that there were 
no pumpkin , clods, or other substances 
secreted in them to increase their w r eight. 
Another, who had been taught the num¬ 
bers on the balance, prepared to weigh, 
and another, who had learned the num¬ 
bers on the baskets, stood ready to an¬ 
nounce the number of each basket as it 
was put on the scales. One set of hands 
stood ready to drag up the baskets and 
lift them on the scales, and another to 
lift them off when weighed, and dump 
them into the large wagon bed. The 
overseer, with a large folding slate in his 
hand, which contained the name and 
number of each working slave, with a 
record of the amount of cotton gathered 
by each one for two or three previous 
days, is seated on a basket, where he can 
see the figures on the balance, and detect 
any attempt to deceive him in the weight. 
All things thus arranged, he calls out, 
“ Weigh, in a little less than no time !” 
The slave who announces the number of 
the basket on the scales, cries out “Fifty, 
sir,” and the one who takes account of 
the weight, responds, “One hundred and 
seventy-five, sir.” The overseer compares 
the number with the record of previous 
days, and orders the black driver, who 


stood ready, with whip in hand, to give 
No. 50, fifty lashes, “ d—d well put on.” 
“She ought to have had over two hun¬ 
dred pounds such a day as this—a moist 
day, no wind, and better cotton to gather 
in than yesterday.” He declares, in tones 
which send terror through all their hearts, 
and with oaths and epithets too vile to 
print, that he will flog every nigger that 
has not more cotton to-day than he had 
yesterday. No. 50 begs for mercy—“ dis 
one time, massa ! Head and back hurts 
me so bad!” 

“ Go to the black driver, you infernal 
b—h,and he’ll cure your aches and pains! 
The cotton is wasting in the field—the 
weather is good for gathering it—cotton 
must come, shall come, or Mr. Nigger’s 
hide must pay the penalty!” 

Another, who was sent to the black 
driver, pleaded that the skin was worn off 
his “ fum and finger.” The overseer 
cursed his thumb and finger, and charged 
the driver to give him “ ’particular hell,” 
and learn him to take care of his thumb 
and fingers. The black driver ordered 
them, one after another, in their turn, to 
“shell off and come down,” (i. e., to strip 
and lie down,) to receive the execution of 
the overseer’s sentence. When any one 
instinctively put up his hand to protect 
his flesh from the blood-extracting lash, 
the driver called on other slaves to stretch 
him out, and hold his hands and feet. 

As the female slaves came down, they 
gathered their clothes up to their waist, 
and lay flat on their faces. If any one 
refused, or did not keep her clothes out 
of the way of the lash, two or three wo¬ 
men were ordered to put her in the vice, 
when one instantly planted her knees on 
the ground, secured the victim’s head 
between them, drew her clothes up so 
as to confine her arms, and lay bare her 
back for the driver’s lash, w r hile two oth¬ 
ers stretched out her feet and held them. 

I have seen from one to thirty slaves 
flogged after this manner, at one cotton- 
weighing. As fast as the wagons were 
loaded, they were driven off to the cotton- 
gin, and when the last wagon was loaded, 
the slaves all hurried to the gin house. 
Here their first business was to gather up 
in large baskets the cotton that had been 
sunned that day, and carry it up twe 








Inside Views of Slavery. 


7 


flights of stairs, into the gin-house. This 
done, the wagons were unloaded, and 
their contents spread upon the scaffolds 
that had just been cleared, to be ready 
for sunning the next day. 

Their day’s work thus finished, they all 
repair, in haste, to their respective cabins, 
calling at the cook-house for their pone, 
(corn bread), which constitutes their al¬ 
lowance for supper, to be washed down 
with water. From this time no slave is 
permitted to leave his cabin until the 
first bell rings in the morning. The 
second morning hell, which is the signal 
for turning out to work, is rung at ihe 
earliest dawn ; when the men, boys, girls 
and women that have no small children, 
are at once marshaled and on their way 
to the cotton-field; and the women who 
have young children are hurried off with 
them to this children’s house, where the 
little things are committed to the charge 
ot an old slave appointed for the purpose, 
who makes the larger children take care 
of the helpless ones. Here the nursing 
mothers were set to gathering cotton 
near the house, and the rest sent after the 
gang. The children under three months 
old were to be nursed four times a day ; 
between three and six months, three 
times; from six to nine months, twice a 
day; and once a day thereafter until 
weaned, at the end of twelve months. 

This species of slave stock is too valua¬ 
ble to be exposed to careless or unskillful 
management. The old nurse has her 
rules laid down, which she must rigidly 
observe. Care is taken that the mother 
does not nurse her infant w T hile her blood 
is heated by toiling in the sun. 

When the dew is off', an old female 
slave brings out all the children over six, 
to gather cotton. In her hand is a bun¬ 
dle of switches, “to teach the young idea 
how to shoot,” though she stimulates 
them more with other appliances than 
with the rod ; such as the fear of the 
overseer and black driver, and encourag¬ 
ing them to race with one another in cot¬ 
ton picking. These juvenile laborers are 
generally between the ages of six and ten; 
all a iver ten go out with the main gang. 

'fjhe dews are very heavy in the Missis- 
sij pi Valley. When nearly off, the slaves’ 
breakfast comes out in a cart. It con¬ 


sists of a box of bread and meat, accom¬ 
panied with a barrel of water. The black 
driver then calls to the slaves to bring 
their cotton to the baskets, change their 
wet clothes and get their breakfast; the 
prescribed allowance of which he deals 
out to each one, while they seat them¬ 
selves on the ground to eat. 

Their dinner is brought out and distrib¬ 
uted. in like manner, about one o’clock. 

The above is a fair specimen of life on 
a cotton plantation, during the cotton¬ 
picking season, which extends through 
a period of about four months. Other 
crops, such as corn, peas and pumpkins, 
are also to be gathered during a part of 
the same period. This is genera ly done 
in wet weather, when cotton could not be 
dried, if picked. 

Toward the close of the cotton-picking 
season, when the weather becomes cold 
and wet, and the slaves need more blood¬ 
stirring exercise to protect them from 
such diseases as colds, rheumatism and 
pneumonia, the men are set to making 
rails, clearing land and ditching, and the 
females to clearing off the stalks from the 
corn and cotten fields. 

'VWhen a slave is sick, he applies to the 
overseer, who examines his pulse and 
tongue, and if inflammatory symptoms 
appear, sends him to the sick-house, to 
the care of an old slave, who gives him 
such medicine as the overseer prescribes. 
But if no visible symptoms of disease can 
be detected, he turns a deaf ear to all his 
complaints, curses and sometimes flogs 
him for playing possum to deceive him, 
and drives him out to his hard toil, weep¬ 
ing and groaning, perhaps with real dis¬ 
ease and suffering. Should he appeal to 
the black driver, as his last resort, for 
pity and favor, his reply would probably 
be : “ Do you tink I is a fool, nigger, to 

let white folks cut up my hide ? No, 
sir-ee—dis nigger not goin’ to be kotched 
in dat manner. If you not able to work, 
go to white folks, and if white folks send 
you back to work, you am got to work. 
Dat am dis nigger’s business wi’ dis whip. 
So don’t fool you time gruntin’ to dis nig¬ 
ger, I tell you—’cause if you does, you is 
goin’ to grunt more worse ’en dat, firs’ 
ting you know.” 

Now, suppose this to be a case of real , 







8 


Inside Views op Slavery. 


and not feigned sickness and suffering, 
and there are multitudes of just such 
cases, who is responsible for this atrocious 
cruelty ? Not the poor black driver, 
surely ; he is impelled by inexorable ne¬ 
cessity. Is it the overseer ? Should he 
adopt a different course, his occupation 
would be gone; his work would never be 
done; every slave that could get rid of 
work by feigning sickness would be sure 
to do it. No; it is the system which is 
the legitimate source of all this cruelty ; 
a system which has been blasphemously 
lauded as the offspring of God, and indi¬ 
cative of the highest type of civilization ! 
Voluntary labor, stimulated by hope or 
desire, has no occasion to feign sickness. 
The question of ability to work may be 
safely left to the laborer himself. But 
the victim of coerced labor cannot be 
trusted thus; his driver must decide the 
question for him, and he is very liable to 
decide it cruelly, though unintentionally. 
But in charging this cruelty upon the 
system, which is a mere abstraction, we 
charge it, by implication, upon all who 
sustain the system, either directly or by 
connivance. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Well Managed Plantations. 

Our last sketch left the reader on one 
of the plantations of Mr. L., of Louisiana, 
the first one on which the writer was ever 
employed as a mechanic. This was con¬ 
sidered one of the best managed planta¬ 
tions in the parish, for which no small 
part of the credit was due to the intelli¬ 
gence, skill and business energy of his 
faithful overseer, by whom his slaves were 
well fed, well clothed, well housed, well 
cared for in sickness and in the tender 
age of infancy and childhood ; and, it 
may be added, well worked , and well flog¬ 
ged for any delinquency or slackness. 

The allowance of food for each work¬ 
ing slave was half a pound of pork a day, 
taken with corn bread and water for 
breakfast, with the addition of vegetables 
for dinner. These meals are taken in the 
field, as described in a former number. 

On this plantation there were from one 
hundred and twenty to one hundred and 


thirty cotton-pickers to be thus fed, be¬ 
sides the infirm, the small children, and 
others that were at home in their quar 
ters. The food was prepared at the 
slaves’ quarters by the cook, who provided 
the aggregate allowance for the whole 
gang, divided into as many equal parts as 
the gang numbered. The slaves provide 
themselves with tin buckets or gourds, | 
according to their means, in which to re¬ 
ceive respectively their allowance, as it is 
dealt out to families and individuals. The 
allowance for supper, as before noticed, j 
was simply corn bread and water, the 
slaves sometimes reserving a portion of 
the pot liquor, which comes with their 
breakfast and dinner, to sop their bread 
in at night. The supper is the only meal 
taken at their quarters. This is what, in 
southern parlance, is called good feeding. 

For summer clothing the men received 
each one cheap palmetto hat, one Lowell 
cotton shirt, two pairs of pants of Lowell 
cotton, one pair of shoes; the women, 
one cotton handkerchief, one cotton un¬ 
der garment, two cotton coats, and one 
pair of shoes. For winter, the men re¬ 
ceived each two cotton shirts, one linsey-1 
woolsey jacket, one pair of pants of the i 
same cloth, one pair of shoes, and once 
in two years, a cheap cotton felt hat. ! 
The winter allowance for the women was 
one cotton head-kerchief, two cotton un¬ 
dergarments, one linsey-woolsey coat, and 
one pair of shoes. Skirts they make for 
themselves, if they have them, by patch¬ 
ing the fragments of worn out clothes. 
Each working slave was allowed one 
cheap blanket every second year. 

On Monday morning they were all re¬ 
quired to turn out with their cotton 
clothes well washed, or receive twenty- 
five lashes. Sunday is their washing-day. 
Some take the night for it, after their 
day’s work is completed. I afterwards 
found that the plantation regulations va¬ 
ried among different owners and overseers, 
some of whom give out their slaves’ al¬ 
lowance on Sunday for the whole week, | 
three and a half pounds of meat, and a 
peck of corn meal, which the slaves cook- 
ed for themselves at night. This was, 
however, found to be bad economy, iJr-s- 
much as the labor of cooking encroach y d 
upon their needful hours of rest, and thus 









Inside Views of Slavery. 


9 


impaired their health and strength and 
their productive power. It was therefore 
superseded on large and well regulated 
plantations, by a common cooking-estab¬ 
lishment where the meals were well cook¬ 
ed and at seasonable hours, by an old and 
experienced slave. 

Planters generally worked their slaves 
from day-break until dark, with no other 
intermission than the short time required 
for a hasty breakfast and dinner; except 
that during a part of June and July, up 
to the time of cotton-gathering, a recess 
of two hours in the midst of the day was 
allowed them. 

Mr. L’s slaves were comfortably 
housed. Their quarters consisted of small 
one-story frame tenements ol two rooms 
each, to accommodate two families, with 
a chimney in the center. They are 
weather boarded, and have a tight board 
floor, a comfort with which negro quar¬ 
ters are not always furnished, without 
ceiling, lining or windows, except wooden 
shutters. These buildings, arranged in 
two or more rows, placed at equal dis¬ 
tances from each other, of uniform style 
and size, all white-washed, present to the 
beholder an attractive appearance, some¬ 
what resembling a neat New England 
village. Add to this the cleanly appear¬ 
ance of the slaves on Monday morning, 
with their newly washed garments of 
Lowell cotton, and we have a specimen 
of Dr. Adams’ South-side View, “beau¬ 
tiful outwardly,” like the “ whited sepul¬ 
chres’’ spoken of by our Savior. To 
infer from this show of order and beauty, 
that comfort and happiness reign within, 
would be about as rational as a like 
conclusion drawn from the appearance 
of the splendid edifice which contains 
the manacled prisoner. 

Such were the negro quarters on the 
best regulated plantations in the region 
where 1 resided. On other places they 
were mean, uncomfortable log cabins, 
with the ground for a floor. 

As to furniture, it is such as the slaves 
can make a shift to provide for themselves, 
as nothing of the kind is included in their 
allowance. A large gourd serves them 
for a bucket, a small one for a dipper ; a 
rudely constructed bench or stool, for a 
chair, and a like rude construction or a 


box for a table. Their lodging is either 
on the floor, wrapped in their blanket, or 
in a rough bunk framed in a corner of 
their cabins, or on master’s old cast off 
bedstead. Their beds, if any are able to 
obtain that luxury, consist mostly of corn 
shucks enclosed in a tick of old cotton 
sacks, or the patched fragments of their 
tattered garments, while a very few who 
have means purchase new ticking. A 
wooden tray, of their own manufacture, 
serves the double purpose of platter 
and plate for the family table, and in eat¬ 
ing they illustrate the common saw, that 
“ fingers were made before forks, and 
hands also before knives and spoons.” 
One knife for a family, either pocket or 
case-knife., is about as indispensable as 
farming tools on a plantation. In the 
furniture of different cabins, however, 
there are grades of variety and style, as 
well as in the furniture of any other com¬ 
munity ; each family providing itself with 
conveniences and elegancies, such as 
knives and forks, and plates and dishes of 
crockery or tin-ware, as means permit 
and taste dictates. Such cooking imple¬ 
ments as a pot, kettle or skillet, are among 
their rarities; the embers of the hearth 
for their ash pone, and the hoe for baking 
hoe-cake, subserve the most of their cook¬ 
ing purposes, on plantations where they 
have no general cooking establishment. 

For washing, a tub, block, and paddle, 
beside a stream, lake or bayou, answer 
every purpose. The fire of the hearth 
serves them in the place of lamps or can¬ 
dles. Their fuel they gather and cut for 
themselves, when timber land is near, or 
have it hauled by the teamster when it 
is far off. 

The slaves’ pecuniary means are deriv¬ 
ed from a variety of sources ; such as rais¬ 
ing chickens; working for wages on Sun¬ 
day,when work crowds ; cultivating patch¬ 
es of their own on Sundays, an indulgence 
with which overseers sometimes stimu¬ 
late their best slaves ; and female prosti¬ 
tution, in which line many of the fairest 
of the sex do a very profitable business 
with wealthy paramours. 

Sunday is the slave’s own day, on all 
well regulated plantations, except so 
much of it as their owner may require of 
them for washing and mending clothes, 




10 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


sharpening and repairing tools, and other 
necessary preparations for the plantation 
work of the ensuing week, which must 
not be interrupted by these incidental 
avocations. Whatever work of their 
own they have to do must be done on 
this day, for the six days’ labor, from ear 
ly dawn to the shutting down of night, is 
all claimed by their owner. The Lord’s 
day is the slave’s day, in which to labor 
and do all his own work, and some of his 
master’s, while the six are consecrated 
days—consecrated exclusively to the ser 
vice of his earthly owner. The Sabbath 
is the day for him to work for wages, cul¬ 
tivate his own patch, gather moss for the 
market, market his chickens and his little 
crop of vegetables, and fit up or repair 
the rude comforts of his own cabin. All 
this work of his own and his master’s, 
crowded upon this single day, makes it a 
poor day of rest for the slave. 

On another of Mr. L.’s well managed 
plabtations, where I was likewise employ¬ 
ed as a mechanic, Mr. G. was overseer, 
who had the reputation of being an ex¬ 
cellent manager. Indeed, it was in all 
respects similar to the management of 
the overseer on the first named plantation, 
and between the two there was a constant 
strife to outdo each other at cropping. 
This spirit of emulation, I afterwards 
found, was common to all the overseers 
in that region, which made them furious 
Jehus at slave-driving. This may be 
sport, or at least gain, to the competitors, 
but suffering sorrow to their panting hu¬ 
man teams. Not that they are regard¬ 
less of the life and health of their slaves. 
They are as careful to keep them in good 
condition as to get “ the last lick ” of 
work out of them, for one is subservient 
to the other. Their ambition is to secure 
the greatest possible amount of gain to 
their employers, and thus obtain for 
themselves good situations and large sala¬ 
ries ; and, like the stock-growing firmer, 
they think as much of improving the 
value of the planter’s human stock, as of 
his crops. No pains are spared to make 
the negroes strong and healthy, and to 
rear a numerous and vigorous offspring. 
In the Utter respect their care is often 
excessive—I mean excessively severe. 
Mr. G., the overseer last named, told me 


that his rule was to give a slave mother 
one hundred lashes, if she lost her child ; 
as if a mother’s affection were not induce¬ 
ment enough to secure watchfulness and 
care on her part, and a mother’s anguish 
at the death of her child not sufficiently 
intense, without the addition of this terri¬ 
ble scourging! 

Mr. G.’s care of the health and condition 
of his negroes did not spare their hides, 
as their scarred backs gave unmistakable 
proof. I noticed on the plantation be 
managed, a large number of slaves who 
had been so cut up with the lash that 
their backs were marked with scars and 
welts from their shoulders to their heels. 

I was surprised and schocked at the 
amount of whipping which I witnessed 
myself on this plantation. I rode out, 
one day, with the overseer, to their field 
of labor. They were cutting timber, and 
getting out rails. A number of them, 
whose movement did not please him, were 
ordered to shell off and come down, to 
have their activity quickened with the 
driver’s excruciating lash. 

One Sunday morning I witnessed a 
punishment of a very different kind. The 
vigilant overseer had, the night before, 
caught a slave in the act of cooking a pig 
he had stolen. He was immediately 
taken to the stocks, and there fastened 
by the neck till the next morning. After 
breakfast, the overseer ordered ids black 
driver to bring the culprit to his hous;-*, 
along with the pot of pig he had cooked. 

“ Shell off your clothes, sir, and sit 
down!” 

“ The poor fellow trembled, and rolled 
his eyes in a wild manner, as if watching 
an opportunity to break away. Hut the 
presence of the driver, with his heavy 
loaded whip ready to knock him down, if 
he made the attempt, precluded all hope 
of escape. The overseer taunted him, 
and bade him help himself to the contents 
of the pot as fast as possible. When he 
ceased, because he could eat no more, the 
raw hide was applied to his bare back, 
and the meat, grease and soup,were forced 
down him until his abused stomach 
disgorged its contents. This only aggra¬ 
vated his punishment, as he was compelled 
to swallow again what his stomach 
threw off, and this process of vomiting 





Inside Views of Slavery. 


11 


and swallowing it again was continued, 
alternated with scourging, until it seem 
ed as if the poor fellow would die under 
the operation. 

Another method of punishment for a 
like oflbnse was adopted by Mr. M., the 
over eer of Col. B. The pig-stealer was 
compelled to wear a ham of fresh pork 
lashed to his shoulders like a knapsack, 
without any relief from the burden, night 
or day, until the flesh dropped from the 
bones. The sickening stench of the pu¬ 
trid meat which the victim was compelled 
perpetually to inhale, and the annoyance 
of the swarms of flies which it attracted, 
in fly time, together with the long process 
of decomposition, rendered this the most 
intolerable punishment! 

AThe overseer on another plantation 
boasted to his brother overseers, who ap 
plauded him for bis skill in managing nig 
gers, that he had compelled a slave to eat 
the whole of a duck which he had stolen, 
fea'hers, entrails, every thing but the 
wings. The same overseer drove a slave 
into the river, where he was drowned. 
He became notorious, indeed, for his out¬ 
rages upon the defenseless blacks. But 
he bore the character of “ an excellent 
cropper, who could make a nigger travel 
about right. This alone was sufficient to 
cover a multitude of sins. Mammon is a 
cruel god, when humanity crosses his 
I path ; it is then he becomes a Moloch. 

Another of the legitimate effects of 
slavery was exhibited on Mr. L.’s third I 
plantation, in which the overseer sus¬ 
pended a slave by his thumbs and great 
toes to the limb of a peach-tree, and 
whipped him to death. To escape pun¬ 
ishment, he crossed over into Mississippi, 
and remained there until the grand jury 
had finished their report of criminal cases 
for the next court. This case excited a 
great deal of sympathy in the neighbor¬ 
hood, not for the poor murdered slave, 
but for the murderer, because he was 
compelled by this unhappy occurrence to 
leave a good situation, while his employer 
kept back his wages to indemnify himself 
for the property he had thus lost. 


CHAPTER V. 

A Mississippi Plantation—Runaways. 

I now crossed over into the State ot 
Mississippi, and worked on three plan:a 
tions belonging to Capt. T. who was con¬ 
sidered a model planter in that section of 
I country. Mr. N. was the overseer of one 
of these plantations. It was the spring 
season, and the slaves were then cultivat¬ 
ing the crop. It was a painful sight to 
one not hardened to such cruelties, to 
watch those overdriven s'aves at their 
work. The old and decrepit slaves 
among the rest were obliged to give their 
constant licks, with their heavy hoes, from 
morning light until dark. They were not 
permitted to straighten up and rest them¬ 
selves, but when one row was finished, 
they swept around in haste to commence 
another. From some of their wounds 
made by the lash, I could see the matter 
oozing out through their clothes, -which 
were stiff and stained by it. Some of 
these poor creatures, who were sore with 
their wounds, would groan with pain 
whenever they stumped their toes, so as 
to jar their bodies. Sometimes, when the 
overseer had flogged a slave, and he did 
not afterwards move quick enough to suit 
him, he would tell the slave he was not 
right yet, and order him to shell oft’ and 
come down again; he would “ make him 
step lighter when he was let up the next 
time.” The slave would beg the overseer 
to “just try him that once, and he would 
step right, that he would,” when the 
overseer would sometimes tell him to 
“ trot then, and raise a song,” so as to 
enliven the gang, who would answer him 
with a cheerful chorus At other times, 
the overseer would ask a slave, whom he 
had flogged, to raise a good laugh, and 
then he should be certain that he had put 
him in a good humor by flogging him. 
If a stranger, unacquainted with this 
forced cheerfulness among the slaves, had 
passed the plantation when they were 
singing one of these lively corn songs, 
they might have supposed these poor 
creatures were giving vent to the over¬ 
flowings of their surplus happines-. 
When Mr. N. thought that any of the 
slaves did not let themselves out to the 
utmost, he would point them to some 








12 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


other slave, and tell them to keep up their 
rows even with his; and if they could 
not do it, he would tell the black driver 
to give them a certain number of lashes 
when they came out to the end of the 
rowj for by Hogging them among the 
cotton, some of the plants would have 
been injured. He would order the dose 
to be repeated at the end of each row, 
until they let themselves out properly. 
This, I found, was the cause of a large 
number of slaves running away, both in 
picking cotton and in cultivating the crop, 
as they could not possibly come up to the 
overseer’s required amount of labor, and 
could not endure the thought of receiving 
another flogging on their old sores. 

But a slave will not run away unless he 
is driven almost to desperation, because 
he dreads the risk of being recaptured, 
and receiving a fugitive’s punishment. 
He is also distressed at the thought of 
leaving bis family behind him, especially 
if he has a young and handsome wife, 
■who he knows will be at the mercy of the 
overseer. I have heard overseers swear 
that it was their rule to take all the fugi¬ 
tives’ wives that v;ere good-looking, for 
themselves, while the fugitives were gone. 
A runaway slave knows that even his fel¬ 
low-slaves will do their utmost to recap 
ture him when he is out, and this for 
three reasons : First, because the same 
amount of work must be done on the 
plantation ; consequently it comes harder 
upon those who remain at home. Second, 
it is dangerous for any of the slaves to 
see or feed a fugitive, for when he is re¬ 
captured and confined in the stocks, re¬ 
ceiving his repeated floggings, and the 
overseer questions him on these points, he 
is almost sure to confess all that has taken 
place during his absence, and sometimes 
more. I have seen slaves hold out for 
some time before they would tell who 
had fed them while they were at large ; 
but when their backs had become so sore 
that the whole body would quiver as they 
saw the lash being raised, they would 
generally confess every thing, though it 
might involve wife and child, and cause 
them to be flogged also. Thiid, it is the 
custom to give any slave that may recap¬ 
ture a fugitive, or give such information 
as may lead to his recapture, five dollars 


and upwards. This is a great temptation 
to a slave, who is glad to get that 
amount in order to purchase a calico dress 
for his wife, or a calico coat or headker- 
chief for his child. I have heard fugitives 
say that when they were in the wood, 
every thing that moved frightened them, 
as well as every noise they heard, because 
they did not know but the dogs might 
be on their trail and close upon them. 
These fears cause many of ihe fugitives 
to return and deliver themselves up to 
the mercy of their owners or overseers. 
I saw one fugitive receive the customary 
protracted punishment on this place. He 
was secured to the stocks by the neck 
and two wrists, and received a certain 
number of lashes daily. When the grim 
overseer had laid on the allotted number, 
he told the victim to make himself as 
comfortable as possible, until he returned 
to dress his wounds on the following day. 
There is a sort of “devil-may-care” man¬ 
ner among these time-hardened overseers, 
and an obscene kind of slang used by 
them, that dreadfully shock any one not 
accustomed to their society. This old 
slave was ordered to wash his wounds 
with lime water ; sometimes strong brine 
is used, and I have seen some apply red 
pepper and whisky. These washes are 
used for two reasons: first, to increase 
the victim’s pain; and second, to cause 
the ulcerated wound to dry up and scab 
over. I saw this cruel-hearted overseer 
take a splintered white oak switch, and 
checker the wounds of this fugitive some¬ 
thing as a piece of pork is checkered be¬ 
fore roasting. One day, when I had gone 
with him into the stock room to see this 
fugitive flogged, I asked him whether he 
was not afraid of mortification if he con¬ 
tinued the daily flogging. He answered, 
No, because a few charcoal poultices 
would arrest inflammation, and cause the 
bruised portion to slough off; and if he 
did die, it would make but little differ¬ 
ence, as he was an old runaway rascal. 
When a slave was severely flogged, it was 
the rule to give 'him a good dose of salts, 
to cool his blood, and guard against inflam¬ 
mation. Before the fugitives were put 
to work again, they were ironed with 
some of the customary manacles, which 
they were obliged to wear from one to 




Inside Views of Slavery. 


13 


six months. These manacled slaves were 
guarded during the day by some of their 
fellow-slaves, who watched them home, 
and saw them safely in the stocks at night. 

According to the rules of this model 
cotton plantation, which the overseer 
must enforce or be discharged, if a slave 
failed to reach his work when the gang 
commenced at day-break, the black driv¬ 
er gave him twenty-five lashes ; if he was 
found working with a dull tool, he receiv¬ 
ed twenty-five lashes; if he broke that 
tool or implement, twenty-five lashes; 
should the root which broke the plough 
have been out of sight, it made no differ 
ence, twenty-five lashes. Should the 
mule’s shoulder become sore and galled 
with one of their mean shuck collars, the 
ploughman received twenty-five lash¬ 
es, and lay in the stocks at night until 
he had cured the mule’s shoulder, the 
animal working meantime as usual. If a 
slave did not come out on Monday morn¬ 
ing with his clothes clean and mended, 
he received twenty-five lashes, repeated 
every morning until the clothes were 
washed. I asked the overseer if he 
thought it was right to flog a slave for 
an accident ? He answered that it was 
not his business to know any thing about 
accidents. 

The other large cotton plantations own¬ 
ed by Capt. T. were all managed in the 
same manner and governed by the same 
rules; consequently, it would only be a 
repetition of the same scenes and cruelties 
to describe them. On one of his other 
places something had been stolen. The 
slaves were all called up, and ordered to 
form a line, when the flogging commenc 
ed at the head of the line, and continued 
until the thief confessed her fault, which 
she did only when she saw her parents 
about to be whipped. The slaves who 
escaped the flogging, said, “ Tankee, mas- 
sa—tankee God ormighty, dat it not 
reach us dis time.” 

A brother of his, Major T., who lived 
near one of the plantations on which I 
worked, was a perfect madman among 
his slaves at times. He sent an order to 
Mr. R. to flog one of his slaves, and to 
give the rascal the last lick he could live 
under, because he had not properly se 
cured a gate, and the calves had gone in 


with the cows to the cattle-range. The 
consequence was, that the owner of sever- 
I al hundred slaves had drunk his coffee 
I without milk that morning. Before flog¬ 
ging one of his best working slaves, Mr. 
R. made some inquiry, and became satis¬ 
fied that this slave was not guilty of leav¬ 
ing the door unlatched. The old mad¬ 
man heard that the overseer had not 
obeyed his orders, and he swore that such 
an overseer should not manage a dog for 
him any longer. He then rode to the 
field and ordered Mr. R. “to give that in¬ 
fernal black rascal particular hell.” Mr. 
R. refused, said the slave was not out of 
the quarters that night, and he should 
not flog him. The Major then swore 
that he was the master ot that plantation, 
and that nigger should be flogged. “I had 
to take my coffee without milk, this morn¬ 
ing ; so flog the rascal, sir; I say, give 
him the last lick he can live under ; and 
remember, sir, if he does not deserve it 
now, he has deserved it, or will deserve it. 
Make the rascal’s hide so that it won’t 
hold shucks, sir!” Mr. R. refused to 
obey these orders, and Major T. discharg¬ 
ed him. He then ordered his black driv¬ 
er to take vengeance on the rascal who had 
deprived him ofthemilk for his coffee. lam 
able to state these particulars minutely, 
because not having then fully imbibed 
the views and habits of the slave drivers, 
the scenes I first witnessed riveted my 
attention, and made a more lasting im¬ 
pression on my mind than the scenes of 
after years. It was abhorrent to every 
feeling of my nature to think of the great 
difference between this reckless slave¬ 
owner and his two or 4 three hundred 
slaves. The former had drank his coffee, 
that morning, without milk, and some 
slave must be punished for it, right or 
wrong, guilty or not guilty; while the 
working portion of the slaves had sat on 
the ground, in the cotton field, to eat 
their breakfast of coarse corn bread, made 
of cornmeal, salt and water, with a slice 
of fat pork and a gourd of cold water. 


41 







14 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


CHAPTER VI. 

A Wealthy Oivner-aa JExliorter. 

I now commenced to work for Mr. P., 
who owned four large cotton plantations. 
The discipline on this wealthy gentleman’s 
plantations was altogether in the hands 
of the overseers ; consequently, it varied 
according to their taste and opinions as 
to the best mode of obtaining the largest 
amount of labor from the slaves under 
their charge. The plantations of Mr. T., 
mentioned above, were, in fact, managed 
by himself, and every lash given to his 
slaves was regulated by his written plan¬ 
tation laws. He kept up a weekly cor¬ 
respondence with all his overseers, and 
had his own mail, (which was much more 
regular than the U. S. mails generally 
are,) to carry that correspondence to and 
from his several plantations. But Mr. 
P. did not visit his places more than twice 
a year, and kept up no regular corre¬ 
spondence with the overseers. The time 
he usually visited them was in the spring, 
when the crop had been pitched, that he 
might examine the condition of the 
plants, and make some calculations on 
the prospect for a crop, and again at the 
commencement of the cotton-gathering 
season, when he could form a still more 
accurate estimate of what he might ex¬ 
pect. During these visits of their master, 
the slaves were not allowed to make any 
complaints to him ; indeed, all he cared 
about was to find his crop looking well, 
and to see that 'his slaves were in proper 
condition to cultivate and gather it; just 
as a farmer would glance at his team, to 
ascertain whether it was in good work¬ 
ing condition. 

I also found that the overseers in this 
neighborhood took much less pains to 
conceal their habits of licentious inter¬ 
course with the female slaves than those 
with whom I had previously become ac¬ 
quainted. So little shame was there 
among them, that it was common for the 
overseer to order his own fancy girl to 
bring a young female slave to room with 
a friend who might come to visit him; 
and this fancy piece was frequently under 
the necessity of \3oing the same thing 
for the overseer himself. 

On one of Mr. P.’s plantations, where 


the field was at least three miles long, and 
the slave-quarters w r ere at one end of it, 
the slaves were required to be in line in 
front of the overseer’s house, ready to 
call out their names, an hour before day¬ 
light. When they were in their places, 
the black driver awoke the overseer, and 
told him all was ready for calling the roll. 
When the order to go ahead was given, 
the first slave on the line called out his 
name loudly, and the rest in turn follow¬ 
ed his example. If one was out of place, 
the blackdriver accounted for him or her, 
saying, “Sick, sah “Punaway, sah,” etc. 
When the overseer gave the order to 
travel on, they all called out, “ Thanhee, 
sah.” When they returned from work at 
night, the same line was formed, and the 
roll again called, -when, if there were any 
accounts to settle, the overseer gave the 
order to the driver to do the flogging. 
Then the poor slave who had worked all 
day, must lie that night in the stocks, 
being fastened in them by the neck or 
legs. My sleeping room was adjoining 
the stodk-room, and when the savage, 
overseer was gone to bed, the poor slaves 
w T ith their necks fast in the stocks would 
tap against the plank partition, and call to 
me, “ Massa Kanic, Massa Kanic, (mean¬ 
ing Mechanic,) jus please hab mercy op 
dese poor niggers, and raise dem stocks ; 
den you put us neck back when da driv¬ 
er ring de bell; please, Massa Kanic, 
cause dese niggers am suffer too much.” 
This was a dangerous undertaking; but 
some nights I could not sleep until I had 
granted their request, not having been 
sufficiently accustomed to scen es of cruel¬ 
ty then, and not having any idea that 
I ever should be. When the first bell 
rung in the morning, I got up, and raised 
the stocks, that the victims might re¬ 
place their necks in them again, and be 
tound all right when the black driver 
came to take them to work. Flogging 
was the order of the day on this place, 
which was managed by an Irishman. His 
treatment of captured fugitives was more 
cruel, if possible, than that on Capt. T.’s 
plantations. I saw him put one of his 
recaptured victims in the stocks, by his 
neck and two wrists. The victim was 
perfectly nude, and lying flat on his abdo¬ 
men. He then ordered an old slave who 





Inside Views of Slavery. 


15 


attended to his garden, horse, fires, etc., 
to put a handful of coarse alum salt on 
the victim’s breech, when he took up a 
three foot white oak clapboard with both 
hands, raised it as a rail-splitter would 
raise his maul, and then brought it down 
upon the alum salt, crushing the salt into 
the poor fugitive’s flesh. The order was 
given to lay on more salt, and the power¬ 
ful overseer again crushed it in with the 
clapboard, which was of the kind used in 
the new settlements to cover log-cabins. 
When the operation was finished, the 
lacerated wound was washed as I before 
described ; a dose of salts was given to 
the groaning victim, and he was taken to 
the blacksmith’s shop, where a stiff leg 
was riveted on him. He was then sent 
to the plow, where he was compelled to 
keep up with a fast-walking mule. I wit¬ 
nessed a great many cruel scenes, but it 
was particularly revolting to see the fe¬ 
males flogged with their clothes stripped 
up to their waist, while their husbands, 
fathers and brothers, who stood in the 
line, durst not so much as turn their 
heads toward them, when they heard 
their screams for mercy, such as, “ Dis 
onetime! Oh! forgive dis poor nigger! 
Dis one time! My Massa ! My Massa!” 

The overseer on the second plantation 
managed much the same as the one I 
have described. The other two were, 
more humane, but worse, if possible, in 
their licentious habits. One of them own¬ 
ed ten or twelve slaves himself, and also 
extended his amours to other plantations 
in the neighborhood, through the agency 
of his own female slaves. 

I now engaged to work for Mr. S , who 
had been an exhorter among the Metho¬ 
dists, before he became a slaveholder. He 
was then living with one of his female 
slaves, (if not two,) by whom he now has 
a family of children. He did not possess 
sufficient control over his temper to flog 
slaves in a cool, business like manner, as 
I had seen the time-hardened overseers 
flog them, but had to be worked up into 
a towering passion first; then he would 
lay hold of the first thing he could put 
his hands on, and knock down, kick, and 
abuse his victims in a most brutal manner. 
On the large plantations where I had 
been lately at work, the slaves had warm 


cabins to live in, and had t heir food and 
clothes much as on Mr. L.’s plantation, 
described above; but Mr. S. fed, housed, 
and clothed his slaves badly, and con¬ 
stantly abused them, because, as he de¬ 
clared, he treated them better than other 
slaves were treated by their masters, and 
yet they treated him worse, robbing him 
continually. This bad feeding and cloth¬ 
ing drove a number of the slaves, w T ho 
worked at home, to help themselves to 
their own out of their master’s corn-crib 
and hog-lot. Having thus made a suc¬ 
cessful commencement, they learned to 
increase their comforts by extending their 
operations, so as to trade off a portion of 
the crib and hog I6t for a little flour, cof¬ 
fee, sugar, and tobacco, and also a little 
whisky, to cheer up their narrow, filthy 
cabins, which were more like hen-houses 
than human habitations. Many of the fe¬ 
males hired their own time of their mas¬ 
ter ; some of the old slaves paid him ten 
dollars a month, the younger fifteen or 
twenty dollars. Besides boarding them¬ 
selves, these were driven to prostitution 
to assist them in living a little better than 
usual, and in paying their master his 
wages, which must be rendered prompt¬ 
ly, no matter how they earned it. 

The old man was a great newsmonger, 
but was too stingy to subscribe for a pa¬ 
per ; consequently, when his slaves came 
home to pay their wages, they had to re¬ 
late all the gossip of the past week. 
Every thing that had transpired worthy 
of notice, from the parlor to the kitchen, 
was now stuffed into “ole massa’s” ears, 
in hopes of pleasing him, and getting him 
to give them back a portion of their earn¬ 
ings, to enable them to purchase a hand¬ 
kerchief, a dress, or a pair .of shoes. 

The crimes of slavery cannot be writ¬ 
ten, otherwise a flood of light might here 
be cast on the doings in Southern cities; 
the jealousies and quarrels in families ; 
the irrepressible conflict between the 
mistress and her lord, and her good-look¬ 
ing mulatto female slaves; the wide and 
almost universal extent, especially amongst 
the young men, of partiality for the good- 
looking female slaves. I now learned 
that some slaveholding mistresses charged 
their female slaves higher wages than 
they could possibly earn in an honest 






16 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


manner. Mrs. D. charged this class from 
one to two dollars a day for their time. 
One of these female slaves was whiter 
than her mistress, and paid her two dol¬ 
lars per day, and yet was able to clear 
sufficient to purchase her freedom. , From 
what I have seen of the female slaves, j 
they are generally inclined to go astray 
from the paths of virtue; but I fully and 
conscientiously believe that the crushing, 
degrading, prostituting influence of slav¬ 
ery is the cause of this downward ten¬ 
dency. For in their youth and virtuous 
innocence they are no more liable to err, 
in that respect, than females of other 
rprties. At first their seducers order an 
/old female slave to bring the fluttering, 
innocent one to their foul embraces ; or, 
if they have not the power to order, then 
they must bribe some lost old hag to do it. 
When these victims have once fallen, they 
have no guardians to reclaim them again, 
and it is no disgrace for them to continue 
in forbidden paths. It would be labor 
lost, for parents to try to train up their 
daughters in a virtuous manner, even if 
they had been so trained themselves, be¬ 
cause one command from a brutish, lust¬ 
ful master, would destroy all their efforts. 

Thus it is that a pro-slavery church aids 
and abets the wicked oppressor in seduc¬ 
ing and prostituting temples which it is 
their duty to prepare for the living God 
to dwell in; opposing the work in which 
pure and undefiled Christianity, acting in 
the Spirit of the Master, delights to be 
engaged--that of educating, elevating and 
ennobling the crushed and degraded. 
And doubtless those who would oppress, 
crush, degrade, seduce and prostitute any 
part of the human family, possess a por¬ 
tion of the spirit of him who, in the form 
of a serpent, brought about the degrada¬ 
tion of our race; who would have pre¬ 
vented our elevation by tempting our great 
Liberator to forego his work of mercy and 
love, for the world and its allurements; 
and who, down to the present day, sows 
such a plentiful crop of tares in the church, 
that they almost choke out the wheat. 


CHAPTER VII. 

Manacles and Instruments of Tor Jure. 

Before proceeding further with my 
narrative, I will give a description of 
the manhood crushing manacles and im¬ 
plements of torture used on the planta¬ 
tions. They are used on the estates of 
professing Christians, as well as those of 
non-professors. I have seen several re¬ 
captured fugitives working in these irons, 
under Mr. B.,a Methodist of good standing, 
who knew that his church could not 
bring him under its discipline for cruelty 
to slaves. 

The Stocks. 

The stocks are made with holes in 
them for the neck and two wrists ; also, 
holes for the ankles. They are general¬ 
ly about ten feet long, and are made of 
two pieces of plank, say nine inches in 
breadth by two and a half thick. The 
circles for the neck, wrist and ankles 
are cut half out of each plank. These 
planks are supported by two posts at each 
end, and are provided with a hinge at 
one end, and a lock at the other. When 
the victims are put in or taken out, the 
upper plank is raised, and their necks or 
ankles placed in the proper position, 
when the plank is let down again, and se¬ 
curely locked. There are but few planta¬ 
tions in the section of the South where I 
am acquainted, which are not provided 
with stocks. Where the slaves are per¬ 
fectly crushed and broken in to unre¬ 
sisting obedience and the constant strain 
of laboring to the utmost extent of their 
physical powers, without any hope of re 
compense, stocks and manacles may not 
be really necessary ; but where they have 
been recently brought from the border 
States, or from Southern cities, or per¬ 
haps have been house servants, or by a 
change of owners have been transferred 
from an indulgent master to some Leoree 
of a driver, then stocks and manacles’ be¬ 
come indispensable, in order to break 
them in, and accustom them to the “devil- 
may-care ’’ manner of their new drivers, 
their longer hours and more straining 
labor, their much worse fare, and to a 
life where not the least hope of a brighter 
day to come looms up before them to al¬ 
leviate their wretched condition. 







Inside Views of Slavery. 


The Pillory, or Half-bent Stocks. 

In the stocks before described, the vic¬ 
tim lies stretched upon the floor of the 
stock room, but in these he stands up in a 
half-bent position, the posts being longer, 
making the height from the ground to 
the neck hole, say three and a half feet. 
They are made after the same plan as 
the other • stocks, but narrower, giving 
room for two neck and four wrist holes. 
They are used to punish slaves on Sun¬ 
days, by putting delinquents in them 
while the rest ol the slaves are in their 
cabins. They are generally placed in 
open view, near the slave-cabins. 

The Slave-driver’s Whip 

is a large whip, made of platted rawhide, 
heavily loaded with lead at the butt, and 
well calculated for knocking down a re¬ 
sisting slave. Drivers are fond of using 
the whip, because its loud, sharp crack 
stimulates every slave within hearing dis¬ 
tance, just as the crack of the teamster’s 
lash stimulates his beasts when a straining 
pull is to be made ; the dull one receives 
the blow, while the sound of the lash is 
sufficient for the one that is more willing, 
or thin skinned. 

The Sole-Feather Paddle. 

This is a piece of sole-leather, about 
twenty inches long, and as broad as the 
hand in the widest. portion of it. The 
thinnest end of the leather is secured to a 
wooden handle by iron rivets. The han¬ 
dle makes it convenient for use, and 
causes the instrument to play more free¬ 
ly. This is the most silent weapon of 
torture, but it crushes the flesh deep, 
making a very painful wound, and slow 
to heal. 

Putting a Slave Sn the Vice. 

When a female slave, who is undergo¬ 
ing a flogging, is in too much pain to 
keep up her clothes properly out of the way 
of the lash, two or three female slaves are 
called to put her in the vice. One slave 
plants her knees on the ground, holding 
the victim’s head, face downward, be¬ 
tween them ; she then draws the clothes 
over the poor creature’s head so as to con¬ 
fine her aims, while the others stretch her 
by holding her feet. Our papers have 
wasted gallons of ink in representing Aus¬ 


17 


trian cruelties to females, when the Aus¬ 
trians only stripped their coats from their 
shoulders, and flogged their victims on 
the back; but it is left to democratic 
America to put Austria and Naples in the 
background, when it comes to committing 
outrages upon the female sex. 

Flogging-Stakes. 

Three stakes are driven into the ground, 
two of them sufficiently far apart to 
stretch out the victim’s arms to the wid¬ 
est extent, as he lies flat upon the ground 
with his face downward. His wrists 
being bound to these stakes by cords, 
the third stake is placed so as to secure his 
legs by the ankles, when he is stretched 
out at full length. Some slaves are pow¬ 
erful men, and would be dangerous to 
every one around them, when under the 
pain of the lash, if they were not well se¬ 
cured. 

Barrel Punishment. 

A pork barrel is generally used for this 
species of torture. One head is knocked 
out, the other divided into two parts, and 
a half circle, -of about five inches in diam¬ 
eter, cut in each, to form a hole for the 
victim’s neck. When the barrel is placed 
over him, the heading is putin by placing 
one of the pieces on either side of his 
neck, closing them together, forcing 
them into the grooves, and driving on 
the hoops. The victim’s arms are con¬ 
fined in the barrel; he cannot sit nor lie 
down, and cannot rise again when he is 
down. Smearing the slave’s head with 
molasses, to attract the flies, gives addi¬ 
tional terror to the barrel punishment. 
Like all the severer kinds of punishment, 
it is used for disciplining fugitives. I 
have seen the victim marching around 
the cabin yard on Sundays, the children 
drumming him about with sticks, and 
calling him “ mean runaway, runaway, 
runaway from ole massa an’ he work!” 

Spread-Eagle Pole. 

This pole is about three inches in di¬ 
ameter, and of sufficient length to stretch 
the victim’s arms at right angles to the 
body; the wrists being bound with cords 
to the ends of the pole, which is swung 
to the neck by a rope attached to the 
center. 






18 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


Tlie Iron €Jag. 

This instrument is in the form of a cir¬ 
cular iron band, passing through the 
mouth and round the low6r part of the 
head, being fastened with a lock at the 
back of the neck. The part which passes 
through the mouth is a flat piece of iron, 
about a quarter of an inch thick, and is 
provided with a tongue-piece, * which 
passes over the tongue, and prevents its 
moving. On each side of the mouth is a 
hinge, connecting the side pieces with the 
one in front. The object of this punish¬ 
ment is to make slaves careful how they 
talk about white folks’ busmess. Should 
the Rev. Mr. Adams, or any other aider 
and abettor of the cruel Legrees and 
slave-drivers of the South, question these 
slaves about their master’s business, or 
about their condition on the plantation, 
the dread of that cold piece of iron lying 
on their tongues might prevent their giv¬ 
ing the reverend gentleman a correct an¬ 
swer ; if they did not treat him with si¬ 
lent contempt, for asking them about 
those secrets of their prison-house which 
they had been forbidden to expose. 

Bell-Irons. 

This is the worst of all the mannood- 
crushing manacles. A large iron band, 
more than an inch broad and very thick, 
passes round the body above the hips, 
with a hinge on one side for the conveni¬ 
ence of putting it on and taking it off, 
and on the other side the ends, where 
they meet together, are bent outwards to 
form a flange, through which holes are 
made for a rivet to fasten it upon the vic¬ 
tim. Another band, made in the same 
manner as the first, passes round the 
neck. The two are connected by an iron 
rod which is riveted to the hip band, aud 
thence ascends along the back, bending 
in to fit the shoulders and back of the 
neck, where it is riveted to the neck-band, 
and is then continued on above the head, 
to such a height that a cowbell hung upon 
the end of it may be out of arm’s reach 
of the victim, and bending over sufficient¬ 
ly to allow the bell to swung clear of the 
upright bar. 

Stiff Leg. 

This manacle consists of a band of iron 
sufficiently large to go round the leg 


loosely, about six inches above the knee, 
and another smaller one, made with hinge 
and flanges to secure it upon the ankle. 
These two bands are connected by an 
upright iron bar, which prevents the knee 
from bending, and gives the victim a stiff 
leg, thus preventing any chance of escape 
from his guard, who w^orks near him 
through the day, takes him home at night, 
secures him in the stocks till morning, 
and then takes him out to his work, and 
watches him through the day as before. 
This discipline is kept up until the slave 
is sufficiently punished for running away, 
learns to give his best licks of work, to 
be content with his miserable condition, 
and also to know that he can be kept on 
the plantation, whether he is willing to 
remain or not. 

Tlie Coupling Cjt&ain. 

This is a strong chain, about five feet in 
length, secured to an ankle-band at each 
end, and is mostly used to couple two 
slaves together, when teaching them to 
gather large weights of cotton. The 
slaves who have not been raised in the 
cotton field find it an almost insupporta¬ 
ble confinement to keep grabbing at the 
cotton from day-break till dark. Conse¬ 
quently, they lose time during the day, 
and then run away when they find night 
approaching, and the cotton scales close 
upon them, for they know that “ cotton 
or nigger’s hide ” will be the order for 
them. 

Buck’s llorias* 

Recaptured fugitives are sometimes 
compelled to wear a large pair of buck’s 
horns, attached to an iron neck collar. 
The collar is large and heavy, with a 
hinge and flanges for riveting, like the. 
iron bands described above. Two spikes 
ascend upwards from each side of the 
collar, and upon these the horns, having 
holes drilled in them, are secured, the 
prongs of the horns facing towards the 
front, as worn by the old buck himself. 

Capt. C., a neighbor of mine, once had 
his rifle leveled on a recaptured fugitive 
belonging to Col. B. The slave was ditch¬ 
ing at the back of the plantation, and the 
Captain seeing a large pair of buck horns 
tossing about, as the negro stooped to djg 
and raised himself up to cast the dirt from 





Inside Views oe Slavery. 


19 


his spade, supposed, judging from the 
size of the horns, that it was a fine old 
buck, feeding and tossing up his head to 
shake off the swarms of musketoes, until, 
on closer examination, he ascertained that 
his supposed buck had a negro’s head and 
face between the horns. 
m Iron horns about fifteen inches in length 
are sometimes inserted upon the collar in 
place of buck’s horns. 

Iron Neck-Collar. 

This is a simple collar, without the 
horns, and generally has the initials of 
the owner’s name stamped into the iron. 
Sometimes the collar is made of a round 
iron bar, with a hinge and flaEges to hold 
a rivet; in other cases, it is merely a flat 
bar of iron bent around the victim’s neck 
at the blacksmith’s shop. I was* once 
amused when listening, unobserved, to a 
fugitive explaining to his fellow slaves the 
mode in which he rid himself of one of 
these last mentioned collars. With the 
assistance of his friends, he procured two 
log chains, one of which was hooked into 
the collar on one side, the other end of the 
chain being fastened to a sapling; the 
other chain was similarly attached to the 
co lar on the other side of the neck, and 
its farther end fastened to the end of a 
strong pole; then with this pole as a lever, 
and using a small tree for a fulcrum, they 
were able to exert force enough to grad¬ 
ually draw open the ends of the unriveted 
collar, and set the man at liberty. 

The slaves who wear these manacles 
wrap old rags around them to prevent 
them from galling their flesh. Where 
every owner is the lord of his own slave- 
dom, the treatment of slaves, their disci¬ 
pline, punishment, kind of manacles used, 
etc., vary, as a matter of course. 

No laborers, of any race, color or nation, 
will work without a stimulant. Some 
value to be received, some object of desire 
looming up in the distance, stimulates the 
hopes and energies of every individual 
among the toiling millions of freemen. 
But the poor slave cannot be urged on 
by the freeman’s stimulant; the whip and 
the manacles, which are the wages of 
slavery, the coins that pass current in 
slavedom, must move him. If slavery is 


divine, then these stimulants are divine 
also, even to the fugitive slave-catcher 
and his dogs. If a slave, like a ship in a 
calm, having no motive power, stands 
still in my field, how can I stimulate that 
slave to perform his constant straining la¬ 
bor? If, w T hen I apply the stimulating 
lash, he breaks for the swamps and cane- 
brakes, how shall I recapture him without 
putting the well trained dogs upon his 
trail ? Then, how shall I make an exam¬ 
ple of him to overawe his fellow-slaves, 
unless I give him a greater punishment 
than that which is used to stimulate them 
in their every-day labors ? IIow can I 
prevent his escape the second time, un¬ 
less I rivet my chains and manacles upon 
him, put him to work under guard during 
the day, and secure him in the stocks at 
night, until I have completely crushed the 
manhood out of him, convinced him that 
I can keep him whether he is willing or 
not, and until I have made him a willing 
and obedient thing, a slave, to come cheer¬ 
fully when I say come, to go cheerfully 
when I say go, to walk when I say walk, 
and to trot when I say, “ Trot, you black 
rascal, trot ?” 

Suppose that the reverend slaveholder, 
the professing Christian slave breeder, 
and the reasonable city master and ten¬ 
der-hearted mistress, had no indirect 
mode of stimulating their slaves, by 
threats of selling them to the trader, to 
the southern Legrees, and plantation 
slave-drivers, would not slavery in their 
case come to a dead lock at once ? Would 
not the reverend gentleman’s slave tell 
him to clean his own boots and curry his 
own horse ? Could the professing Christ¬ 
ian slave breeder “kotch his stock wi’ 
mouldy corn,” or would not the tender¬ 
hearted mistress’s house slave tell her to 
do her own rubbing and scrubbing, and 
to sling her own pots, otherwise to pay 
lawful Christian wages for having this 
labor performed ? I admit that slavery 
has many degrees of turpitude, from the 
reverend slaveholder himself down to 
Mr.-, on Red River, to whom Un¬ 

cle Tom’s Legree is not worthy of hold¬ 
ing a pine knot torch, to lighten up the 
cruelties committed upon his poor, dirty- 
looking, badly fed, badly clothed, and 
over driven slaves. 





20 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


If any reverend minister wishes to sat¬ 
isfy himself of these facts, let him turn 
out as a missionary on the cotton and su¬ 
gar plantations of Louisiana, and if he is 
an honest Christian minister, who loves 
God more than self, fears God more than 
mortal man, and has drunk deeply of the 
spirit of the Master, who was rich, but for 
our sakes became poor, then I am willing 
to abide the issue of his answer and expe¬ 
rience. If he will examine the scarred 
and welted bodies of the victims, those 
scars and welts will speak with ten thou 
sand tongues, and speak louder than all the 
pro-slavery divines in the world united. 

When I could no longer drive slaves, I 
could not hold fellowship with slavery, 
any more than I could hold fellowship 
with robbers, prostitutes or murderers, 
who had neither repented of nor forsaken 
their wicked doings. Could I hold fel¬ 
lowship with the slave-trader at the com¬ 
munion-table, if he had his coffle-gang 
manacles swung around him, and was 
seated on a hogshead of his victim’s tears ? 
Could I sit in fellowship with the slave- 
driver at that table, if he held his bloody 
lash in his hand, and was calling for “cot¬ 
ton or nigger’s hide ?” Could I commune 
with the fugitive slave catcher, if he had 
his dogs, bloody up to their eyes inhuman 
gore, panting at his feet ? Or could I sit 
under the ministry of Rev. Mr. Van Dyke, 
and see him trail the holy banner of the 
Cross in the blood of the victims of sla¬ 
very ? Would not my mind carry me 
back to the cruel scenes *which I had 
witnessed in slavedom? And would not 
the screams and unavailing prayers of the 
church’s victims ring in my ears ? Yes, 
yes; I should see blood on that carefully 
written sermon, and I should think that 
the arch enemy of mankind instigated and 
assisted him to write it. I should see 
blood on the pulpit and on the communion¬ 
table; and as I rushed out, I should see it 
sprinkled upon the doorposts of his 
church. 

When the love of God was shed abroad 
in my soul, it revolted against the cruel¬ 
ties of slavery upon the plantations, and I 
dared not join hand in hand with the cruel 
oppressor any longer; although self and 
duty had a hard struggle before I was 
illiug to give up my living. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Commencement of my own slave-driving. 

I I had several times been offered situa¬ 
tions to manage cotton plantations. by 
gentlemen for w 7 hom I was working. 
Capt. T. before mentioned once told me 
that I should never make much money by 
working on plantations as a mechanic; 
but as an overseer, I could make my 
fortune, because my salary would be 
better ; and if I attended to business pro¬ 
perly, my situation would be permanent; 
my expenses also would be less. To this 
I replied, that I would never drive slaves, 
while my own two hands could earn my 
bread 

But at length, owing to bad health, 
which unfitted me for labor, having im¬ 
bibed southern opinions on the slave 
question generally, accustomed as I was 
to constant scenes of cruelty, and having 
learned all the routine of au overseer’s 
duties, I engaged in business on the home 
plantation of Major D., whose indulgence 
to his slaves and his aristocratic mode of 
living forced him to sell one of his plan¬ 
tations, and to employ more crowding 
overseers afterwards. I had seen a great 
deal of rascality, and, as I thought, unnec¬ 
essary abuse practiced towards the slaves, 
by low, mean overseers. I had constantly 
heard them order slaves to u shut their 
mouths and keep their thoughts to them¬ 
selves, to save their infernal hides,” when 
these slaves had given their overseers 
good advice respecting the management 
of business; so I resolved to crowd them 
at tliAr work when necessary, and keep 
up strict discipline, but in other things to 
be as merciful as possible; also to take 
good advice from a slave, and lastly, to 
have no favorites among them, but to 
treat every one according to his merits. 
I soon found, however, that I had many 
things to learn of the difficulties of an 
overseer, which I did not know when I 
began. First, that it is much more au 
noying for a person to see a slave flogged 
when he does not know the cause, then 
it is for a man who fiuds business crowd¬ 
ing upon him, and flogs, or orders it to be 
done, under that impulse. Second, that 
since slaves cannot be discharged, like 
free laborers, when they become slack, 







Inside Views of Slavery. 


21 


careless or dissatisfied, the lash, or the 
fear of it, is always necessary ; and the 
overseer who uses it most promptly, with 
proper judgment, will use it the least. 
Third, that the amount of labor which 
an overseer must require the slaves to 
perform, makes it utterly impossible for 
him to be a merciful man. He must 
harden his heart against listening to com¬ 
plaints of aches and pains, when he sus¬ 
pects no danger to life, and thus he be¬ 
comes in the end an overbearing and 
reckless tyrant. However, by making 
use of the opinions of intelligent slaves, 
I had more work accomplished, with less 
labor, than would have been got out of 
them it I had followed the example of 
those overseers who cursed the slaves for 
expressing their opinions, and bade them 
keep their ideas it they would save their 
own h des. Of course, the credit of good 
management went to my own account, 
and when I gave up the mean business, I 
had obtained the character of a successful 
cotton grower. 

I once flogged one of the Major’s.slaves 
in front ot his dwelling-house, when he 
had company. This annoyed the family 
very much, and the Major swore that he 
would not have had the slave flogged 
there for five hundred dollars. I excused 
myself by saying that I knew nothing 
about his visitors, when he instructed me 
never to flog another slave near his house; 
it was very annoying to his own family to 
hear the report of the lash and theories 
of the slave. Every thing about that fine 
mansion moved in beautiful order, be¬ 
cause, whenever it was necessary for the 
servants to be stimulated, they were sent 
to the overseer with a note, stating the 
number of lashes he was to give them. 
The fear of the lash often causes the fe¬ 
male slaves to promise the overseer to 
visit him of nights, if he will not flog 
them, which arrangement he is very like¬ 
ly to agree to, as they are not under him, 
and having given him no ciuse of offense, 
he is favorably disposed towards them. 
Thus slavery being an evil, leads to evil 
continually. I had an opportunity, while 
on this plantation, of learning the evil ef¬ 
fects of slavery on the sons of slavehold¬ 
ers, who fall into evil habits of association 
with female slaves when mere boys. 


It would be useless repetition for me to 
describe, in narrative form, all the details 
of my course as an overseer. From first 
to last, I followed the resolve I made at 
the commencement, that when my load 
w r as heavy, and the road was bad, 1 must 
whip up the team which I drove. I had 
the character, as a general thing, among 
the slaves, of being tight about business, 
but just, as far as a slave-driver can be 
just; kind and attentive to the sick, and 
always ready to give deserving slaves a 
chance to make themselves a little money, 
whenever the opportunity offered. FTevei- 
theless, I now at times shed bitter tears 
when I remember the wrongs which I 
have committed upon those helpless, 
down-crushed creatures, and I have in 
deed good reason to use this prayer : 
“ Hide me, O my Savior, within the robes 
of thine own righteousness, on that day 
when thou shall take vengeance on op¬ 
pressors and outragers of the rights of 
their fellow-creatures.” 

I was next engaged to manage the 
plantation of Mr. Y., which was situated 
on a beautiful lake in Louisiana; and from 
that time to the end of my overseeing, 
with the exception of a few months, I man¬ 
aged plantations which were at a distance 
from the owners’ residence of from ten to 
one hundred miles. There was something 
less than fifty working slaves on this 
place, besides the children. I found over 
twenty of them sick with fevers and 
agues, this being their first summer in the 
Louisiana swamp. The former overseer, 
Mr. T., had done some cruel driving, 
which had, of course, increased the sick¬ 
ness. I ordered the black driver to give 
two hours to the slaves in the middle of 
the day, and not to crowd them until 
their health had improved somew’hat. I 
then put some of the slaves to repair and 
make bunks in the cabins, where the in¬ 
mates were sleeping on the floor. This 
done, I removed the sick from a room 
that Mr. T. had prepared as akind of hos¬ 
pital, under the overseer’s house, wLich 
stood on brick pillars some six feet above 
ground. I soon saw that this removal 
had caused the sick slaves to improve and 
look more cheerful. Two of the slaves 
had died a short time before I took 
charge, and one woman had been buried 






22 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


with her manacles securely riveted upon 
her, because Mr. T. did not like the idea 
of having a dead slave taken to the black¬ 
smith’s shop to have the rivets cut loose. 
S aves. like other ignorant people, are su- 
peisiitious, and some of those on this 
p'antalion were afraid to come to my 
house of nights, because they said they 
could hear that woman dragging her 
chain up and down the steps to my door. 
When Mr. Y. found that I had cured up 
the sick without being obliged to seek for 
medical aid, and without losing a single 
hand, he promised to give me a fine suit 
of clothes at Christmas for my attention 
to his sick slaves. But that was a new 
plantation, and as I was not supposed to 
crowd sufficiently to get the work done 
which a new place requires, Mr. Y. sent 
me to another of his plantations, already 
opened, and where he had a crowding 
black driver. This driver had been train¬ 
ed under Mr. G., who was a perfect Le- 
gree, and had drowned one slave just be¬ 
fore he died, which was a few months be¬ 
fore I took the place. The scars and welts 
lef, upon those poor slaves will keep him in 
remembrance, whenever they pass their 
hauds over those knots and welts That 
place was soon al ter wards sold, and Mr.Y. 
took this savage driver to drive his car 
riage. One day, his mistress ordered the 
other slaves to stretch him out and give 
him a severe flogging; but the old dri 
ver, who used to take one side and Mr. 
G. the other, when they flogged a slave, 
coming down upon their victim in the 
same way that two threshers with their 
flails come down upon the grain on the 
barn floor, could not bear the idea of be¬ 
ing 11 >gged himself, and committed sui 
cide by jumping into the lake in front of 
his master’s house. Mr. Y. and his fami¬ 
ly were strict Episcopalians, and on their 
home plantation read the church prayers 
to their slaves on the Sabbath, when the) 
had finished all the fag ends of the plan¬ 
tation business, such as hunting up, mark 
ing, branding, salting and counting the 
stock, grinding and handling their hoes 
and axes, plowmen trimming their 
mules and repairing their plows and har- 
msses, and washing and mending their 
clothes; all of which are probab'y con¬ 
sidered as works of necessity and mercy ; 


necessiiy, because it saves time, which 
would be lost by doing job.s on week¬ 
days; mercy to the slaves, who would 
otherwise have their washing to do when 
they come home of nights, tired and 
weary fiom the labors of the field. 

I now engaged to manage a plantation 
having sixty or seventy slaves, belonging 
to Capt. T. I went out to commence on 
(he first of January, which is the time 
that overseers generally close and com¬ 
mence their engagements, .because the 
past year’s crop is now saved, and prepa¬ 
rations for the coming crop begiD. When 
the black driver returned from his work 
at night, he came to my house to receive 
his orders. 1 told him to continue on at 
his present work, until Icould look around 
the place, and form my own plans for bus¬ 
iness. About ten o’clock that night, I 
heard wagons driving by my house, and 
called to the drivers to know what they 
were doing so late. They answered, 
“Jus’ finishin’ us day task, sah.” The 
next morning I heard thempassmy house 
again, a little before day-break. 1 looked 
out and saw an old slave holding my 
horse ready saddled, when I mounted,and 
cantered to where I was told the slaves 
were at work. It was a cold morning, 
the wind coming across the Mississippi river 
from the north, and I was shivering with 
cold, although wrapped up with a blanket 
overcoat. Although it was a mile from 
the cabins, I found the slaves all at work. 
The black driver stood behind his human 
team, whip in hand, as large as Pompey. 
A little girl was making up a fire among 
some old cotton baskets, which were 
apparently filled with old rags. I asked 
her what she had got in those baskets ? 
She answered, “ Childer, sah, childer.” 
I then told the black driver not to bring 
the children out in the cold any more, 
while I remained on the plantation ; that 
I would tind work for the nursing women 
nearer their cabins, so that they could 
go to a fire and nurse their children 
at the proper time. The driver answered, 
“ O Lor, Massa Obersee, ole mass a not 
goia’ to stan’ dat; he got no time to 
fool wid dem sucUer; he say dat how da 
suckler bring out he childer, cole or hot. 
Dat is ole massa rule, you see, sah. One 
obersee say dat afore you, massa; (fen ole 






Inside ^iews op Slavery. 


23 


rnassa say dat bow he rnassa on dat plan¬ 
tation.” I then concluded that Capt. T. 
might murder his own children, having 
found that among so many female slaves 
he raised but few of their children. I saw 
two boys coupled together with the coup¬ 
ling chain, to prevent their running away, 
and the little girl making fire among the 
baskets, and found from inquiry that there 
were only a few small ones at the cabins. 
I then returned, ate my breakfast, and left 
the plantation. This was one of those 
slave-owners who are too mean to study 
their own interest; and I understood that 
the old Captain subjected all his young 
female slaves to the abuse, for the gratifi¬ 
cation of his own vile passions. 


CHAPTER IX. 

Further Experience in Driving. 

I afterwards engaged to manage a 
new swamp plantation belonging to Mr. 
A., where I improved as a driver. Up 
to this time I had managed old broken- 
in slaves, who gave so little trouble that 
my energies were not fairly aroused. 
But a large number of Mr. A.’s slaves had 
been lately purchased from the trader, 
who had brought them from the Border 
States, where ihey had left better homes, 
and been torn from all whom they loved 
on earth. I used to reflect on these 
things when I heard them sighing and 
groaning, and saw them moping about 
with a melancholy look. But this was 
none of my business; I had my work be¬ 
fore me, and those slaves were bought and 
sent here to do it.. I had not sold them 
or torn them from their families ; and if 
I had done so, it would only have been 
doing what the minister said was Gospel, 
and therefore all right. The Rev. Mr. 
E., a Me hodist minister living in that 
neighborhood, who had already obtained 
permission to preach to the slavesonan ad¬ 
joining plantation owned by Mr. P., asked 
me to give him permission to preach to 
the slaves under my charge. This request 
I refused, because, in the first place, my 
opinions at that time were such as to 
make me doubt the truth of Christianity ; 


and in the second place, Mr. G., a neigh¬ 
bor of mine, who was considered a very 
correct and reliable man, had related to 
me that he was fishing at the bayou one 
Sunday morning, when, hearing a noise 
among the dead cane, he stepped up the 
bank to ascertain who was there, and 
saw the Rev. Mr. E. come out of the 
cane, mount his horse, and ride towards 
Mr. P.’s plantation. As the deal cane in 
the brake still continued breaking and 
cracking, he waited a little longer, when 
out stepped one of Mr. P.’s good-looking 
female slaves, from the plao’e whence he 
had seen the minister come. The old 
man remarked that he would not have 
mentioned the circumstance if it had been 
a young man, but when a married man, 
and a minister of the Methodist church, 
runs after the wenches, he must speak out. 
The reverend Mr. E. did not, boweve , 
give up his purpose, but applied to Mr. 
A., my employer, who told him that he 
left the management of his business en¬ 
tirely to his overseer. Mr. A., however, 
wrote to me, that if I thought it would 
make his slaves better to manage, I might 
let the Rev. Mr. E. preach to them some¬ 
times. I wrote him an answer, charging 
the reverend gentleman with being more 
anxious after the female slaves than he 
was to teach them to behave themselves 
and serve their master properly, and gave 
him the name of old Mr. G, for proof. 

The old negroes who had been raised 
on the coarse fare of the plantations, and 
had been accustomed to cruel driving, 
warned rae of the threats made against 
me by the recently purchased slaves. 
This did not surprise or alarm me, be¬ 
cause I always carried a large bowie- 
knife, and when I anticipated having to 
flog any of the new slaves, I carried my 
Allen revolver, with the first barrel load¬ 
ed with ten or twelve duck-shot; and no 
slave durst come near my house at night, 
until he gave his own name in a loud 
voice, and had received my answer. I 
ordered one of these new slaves, who 
was a powerful man, to shell off his clothes 
and come down, upon which he gave me 
some insulting language—insulting for a 
slave to give a white manin that country. 
I then doubled the lash of ray whip in 
ray hand, and made a blow at his head 






24 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


with the lead-loaded butt. The ground 
being wet, I slipped and fell toward the 
slave, who caught me, and sent me to 
the ground with a force that cut my head, 
and scattered the blood some distance. 
Two women, who were near by, attacked 
the slave with their hoes ; otherwise, I 
presume, my slave-driving would then 
have been finished. The slave then ran 
away, and I was led to my house bleed¬ 
ing profusely. I was confined for a few 
days only, and when I was sufficiently 
recovered to revenge my sore head upon 
him, he was recaptured and brought back, 
when, of course, he was cruelly flogged. 

But I had another powerful Kentucky 
slave, whose manhood had never been 
properly crushed out of him. He swore 
to the other slaves that he would as soon 
die as not, and he was ready, whenever 
the overseer told him to shell off and 
come down. This negro had been torn 
from his wife and family, which made 
him surly and desperate; otherwise he 
was an intelligent and valuable slave. In 
less than a year after that time, I had 
him foreman over my axe-men, and mar¬ 
ried to another wife. The narrow chance 
of my life I had run a short time before, 
caused me to. use more caution than I had 
formerly done; so when I undertook to 
make Kentuck a willing and obedient 
thing , a good working slave, ready to 
trot when he was bidden, I kept my dis¬ 
tance, and ordered him to shell off his 
clothes and come down. This he refus¬ 
ed to do, and I ordered two powerful 
slaves to knock him down with their hoes. 
He then raised his hoe, and told them to 
come on. Seeing the insubordinate atti¬ 
tude of this powerful negro, I resolved 
to use my pistol, which I drew in a mo¬ 
ment, and ordered the two slaves to go 
to their work, saying that I would man¬ 
age him alone. Standing about ten s eps 
from him, I again ordered him to come 

down, or I would send him to-in one 

minute. He then sprang to wards me with 
his upraised hoe, but slightly stumbled ; 
this gave me an opportunity to put my 
load of duck-shot into his thighs, when 
he reeled, and was seized by several slaves. 
I took him to the cabins and ironed him, 
and the doctor took out the shot. Of 
course, he was cruelly flogged, and per¬ 


fectly crushed, before he was let out of 
irons. But he had scarcely got well from 
his repeated flaggings, when his master, 
who lived forty miles from the planta¬ 
tion, came up to visit it, and see how busi¬ 
ness was going on. He gave poor Ken • 
tuck another cruel flogging. Mr. A., 
like most other men not accustomed 'to 
flogging slaves, became more and more 
enraged the longer he flogged him, until 
I had to beg for the slave to save his life. 
But when I did so, Mr. A. told me that 
he would flog his slaves to suit himself, 
and teach them better than to talk their 
large talk, and resist his overseers. 

Although I had driven these slaves to 
perform every lick of work which I sup¬ 
posed they were capable of performing, 
my employer was not satisfied, but want¬ 
ed me to clear and take into cultivation 
fifty acres more than I had made prepara¬ 
tion for. He wrote to me that it must 
come in, and that he could not meet his 
notes due to the slave-trader, unless I 
made him a large crop. I answered that 
I had prepared to take in every acre that 
I could clear up by planting time, and if 
he was determined to put more land into 
cultivation, he must send some one to take 
my place, as it was impossible for me to 
do more than I was doing. This letter 
brought him up from his plantation, to 
judge for himself. He rode halfway on 
the first day, and had traveled twenty 
miles on the morning of his arrival, and 
was sufficiently fatigued to lie down and 
take a nap before he rode out to the 
clearing. My black driver was a noble 
fellow, and had better judgment about 
plantation business than either his master 
or overseer ; so I rode out to the clearing, 
and gave him a few hints which enabled 
him to take a little advantage of his mas¬ 
ter. My employer having rested and 
taken his dinner, we rode out to the clear¬ 
ing, where the slaves were rolling and 
burning log-heaps. The ox-driver, who 
was turning and bedding the large logs, 
was loudly cracking his whip, and had nis 
oxen on the trot. The black driver 
stood on a log heap, and was giving or¬ 
ders in the following style: “Four hand¬ 
spikes to that log ; down with them; roll 
on the log; come, up with the log at 
once, you lazy rascals; the last stick 




Inside Views of Slavery. 


25 


there ; straighten yourself up, sah; step 
quick, and no stumbling ; bed your log 
right where I’m standing ; all right; two 
sticks to that log, Jim; a stick and a 
tailer to that small log, Sam ; Bob, pick 
up that chunk; come on with your tire, 
children ; pile on chips, you little rascals; 
trot, won’t you trot?” and then, cracking 
his whip among the children, “Come on, 
you women gang; trot, I say, trot, and 
toss off this log heap, or I’ll come among 
you like shot out of a shovel.” While 
the driver hurries on the women gang, 
the gang of men rollers are off to another 
pile of logs, prying and chunking them up 
closer than the ox driver bedded them ; 
some slaves are chopping the logs in ten- 
foot lengths ahead of the ox team; others 
are splitting such as can be split into 
fence rails, and every thing moves briskly. 
Mr. A. has been sitting on his horse with 
his arms akimbo, seemingly in a deep 
study, as he watches his over-driven slaves 
work. After some time, he asked me 
how late I worked at nights. I answered 
that I rolled logs until sundown, and then 
all hands, choppers and rail-splitters in¬ 
cluded, commenced to mend up the burn¬ 
ing log heaps, the weakly women and 
largest children mended the chunk heaps, 
and burnt up the trash, and the smallest 
children went home; that it would be 
afcer eight o’clock before we had finished, 
and in the morning they commenced 
again to mend up the log heaps, and to 
double up such as were well nigh burnt 
out, an hour before day. He then told 
me to slack off a little/and never mind 
taking in the other fifty acres, but have 
that, and more if possible, ready for next 
years’ crop; that those slaves would be 
stiffened up like old stage-horses before 
his place was opened, if they worked in 
that manner. I answered that if he could 
hear them grunt and groan mornings, be¬ 
fore they got warmed up, he would think 
they were badly enough stiffened already. 

I always went in for giving the slaves 
sufficient to eat, and when Mr. A. engaged 
me, he asked my opinion about feeding 
slaves. * I answered that my opinion was 
for feeding a team well, and then, when 
my whip cracked among them, they were 
able to answer to it. So he permitted 
me to feed well, and ray standing order 


was to whip the cook, if she did not send 
them sufficient bread and meat. One of 
my neighbors complained of this, and 
said it made the neighbors’ slaves dissat¬ 
isfied with their allowance. 

Mr. A.’s father lived a few miles from 
the city of Baltimore, and as he said that 
his slaves were an expense to him there, 
his son wrote on to him that he would 
give him a hundred dollars per annum 
for them, and feed, clothe, and pay their 
doctor’s bill himself. The old gentleman 
sent on two of them, which I think were 
Mr A.’s share of a lot divided among the 
children. Ooe of these slaves and a for¬ 
mer body servant of Mr. A. had to be 
chained together with a coupling chain, 
to bring them to the constant grabbing 
at the cotton. They were afraid of the 
whip, and when weighing-time approached, 
would run away, and though soon recap¬ 
tured, would do the same again. At 
length the coupling chain was used, and 
two sharp old slaves were set to gathering 
cotton in the adjoining rows on either 
side of them, with orders to watch them, 
and teach them how to take all the cotton 
from a boll at a single snatch ; to remind 
them that night and the cotton-scales, and 
the driver’s whip were approaching; and 
to call on the black driver if they ne¬ 
glected their constant grabbing at the 
cotton. 


CHAPTER X. 

Slaveholding Piety—A Change. 

When I quit Mr. A., I engaged to 
oversee for Mr. J. on his Mississippi plan¬ 
tation. He owned also a plantation in 
the Louisiana swamp, which was managed 
by Mr. L., one of the hardest drivers in 
the country. He found it difficult to 
manage the ditching required on a swamp 
plantation, having been accustomed to an 
upland place; he therefore proposed to 
exchange with me for mine. We made 
the exchange, but I had been long enough 
on the upland place to learn that Mr. J., 
who had been a class-leader and was now 







26 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


a steward .in the Methodist church, had a 
large family of mulatto children by one of 
his intelligent good-looking female slaves, 
although he had a wife and family of 
white children. On the second planta¬ 
tion, also, I found that he had one or two 
favorites, and his son, who came out to 
this place during the short time that I re- 
maintd there, I have reason to believe, 
went after the same two female slaves. 
I spoke to him of the adulterous practices 
of his father, which he acknowledged, and 
remarked that he found it the same 
wherever he went among his father’s re¬ 
ligious friends, and swore that he always 
made it a point to take advantage of 
them in particular, if the objects of their 
fancy were good-looking. 

Tne slaves of this professing Christian 
had no religion among them, nor any re¬ 
ligious meetings,to my knowledge. They 
were poor, ashy-looking things, and I saw 
that the ditchers staggered when they 
cast a large spadeful of dirt out of the 
ditch. When I came to rolling logs, I 
could not put enough of them around a 
log to take it up and walk off with it— 
such a log as four sticks, or eight slaves, 
of Mr. A., would pick up and step off with 
briskly. These slaves had been accus¬ 
tomed to receive a peck of meal, and three 
and a half pounds of pork per week, which 
they had to cook for themselves when 
their day’s work was finished. This I 
found was an unprofitable business, for 
the slaves would often mix up their corn 
meal, put their dough in the ashes, on 
a spider or an old hoe, and then lie down 
and go to sleep ; of course, their bread 
was either burned or not half baked, 
when they had to jump up and take it 
with them, as they hastened to their 
morning’s work. I found also that their 
pork would be used up before the week 
was more than two-thirds gone, and then 
they were obliged to live on corn bread 
and cold water till their rations were giv¬ 
en out again on Sunday morning. 

I now took a trusty old female slave 
from the field, ordered those who had any 
cooking utensils to carry them to her 
cabin, then gave her the mill key, and 
told her to give those slaves as much well 
baked corn bread as they could eat; I also 
weighed out their pork, and gave it to 


her to put it in soak every evening. We 
had no vegetables, but I ordered the cook 
to give them plenty of lye hominy. It 
was but a short time before I could see 
an improvement in the appearance of 
my team, which consisted of about fifty 
slaves, besides their children. 

I had done a large amount of ditching, 
fencing, log-rolling, and I might add whip¬ 
ping, and was nearly ready to plant corn, 
when I received an order to plant the 
whole place with cotton, and plant the 
corn in every fourth cotton middle. This 
plan is sometimes adopted when there is 
not sufficient land opened for the slaves 
to cultivate. But I had a full quantity 
of land, and indeed too much for those 
weak staggering slaves to cultivate. 
When the proper proportion of a place 
is given to corn, that crop is half cultivat¬ 
ed before cotton-hoeing commences. But 
in planting the two together, the whole 
c« op oomes on at once, and the corn is in 
the way of plowing every fourth middle, 
consequently it requires more hoeing to 
cultivate the crop. Then in gathering a 
corn-crop in the fall, the wagons can be 
driven up to the heaps, which are quick¬ 
ly loaded ; but when horn and cotton are 
intermixed, the slaves have to carry the 
corn in baskets to the turn-row running 
through the field. 

I sent an answer back by letter, that I 
could not cultivate such a crop with 
those weak slaves, two or three of whom 
were dropsical, from taking calomel and 
being exposed afterwards. The reply 
which I received from that slave-driving 
professing Christian was to obey orders, 
and all would be right. I returned an 
answer that I would leave the place on a 
certain day, giving Mr. J. sufficient time 
to supply my place. I then resolved nev¬ 
er to drive slaves for another professing 
Christian. An overseer in Louisiana can¬ 
not recover his salary when he quits be¬ 
fore his year expires, unless he can show 
good cause for quitting, and I had- no 
sufficient cause according to law; so I 
lost my salary for that portion of the 
year which I spent on the swamp planta¬ 
tion. I, however, sued my employer and 
recovered my wages for the time I was 
on the upland place. The merciful man 
is merciful to his beast; but what mercy 




Inside Yiews of Slavery. 


27 


can be expected from a professedly 
Christian slave owner or driver? Mr. 
J. lost so many slaves by his reckless 
driving on his swamp plantation, that he 
was obiiged to give it up and sell out. I 
heard ol his death a short time before I 
lelt the South, and read his obituary no¬ 
tice ia the New-Orleans Christian Advo¬ 
cate , which stated that a good man had 
goue to his reward, and had left an ex¬ 
ample worthy of being imitated by the 
youth of his neighborhood. I then made 
. inquiry to ascertain whether he had lib¬ 
erated his slave children, and found that 
he had not, but had left them, according 
to the reading of the bill of sale, slaves 
for life, and their issue forever, to their 
half brother and sisters; a condition of 
things which must suit the church of 
which he was a member, otherwise the 
writer of that obituary notice could not 
have recommended the youth of his 
church to follow such an example. 

I next engaged to manage a plantation 
for Mr. N. This was not such a situation 
as I desired, but as I wanted business for 
the remainder of the year, I concluded to 
engage. The overseer who had just left 
was discharged for flogging a slave to 
death. The owner told me this was the 
most valuable young slave that he owned, 
and that he had thought of putting the 
law in force against Mr.C., the murderer, 
but that would not recover his property, 
and he therefore thought best to let it 
pa s. The slaves told me that Mr. C. 
chained his victim to a tree, which they 
pointed out to me in the yard. He flog¬ 
ged him until he was tired, when he re¬ 
turned to bis house, took a drink of whis¬ 
ky, rented himself, and then came back to 
finish his dreadful work. 

The cause which led to this murder 
was want of judgment on the part of both 
the owner and overseer. This slave was 
one of the best cotton pickers in the coun¬ 
try, and when the cotton and weather 
wt-re good, it was easy for him to gather 
three hundred and fifty pounds a day. 
But I saw from ths weights of cotton on 
the cotton book, that he had often fall¬ 
en a hundred pounds below that quan¬ 
tity. The owner, who received, in the 
overseer’s weekly report, an account of 
the average weight each slave was gath¬ 


ering, wrote back that his slaves must all 
be flogged until they came up to some¬ 
thing like their former average gathering, 
and especially Oz, who sometimes fell one 
hundred pounds below his best gathering. 
The cause of the low weights gathered 
by the slaves at this time was the scarcity 
of cotton in the field. When there is 
plenty of cotton open, which has had no 
rain upon it, to beat the decayed leaf 
that surrounds the boll into the cotton, or 
to entangle the cotton among the branch¬ 
es, then, if the weather is good, the slaves 
gather their best weights. The old ex¬ 
perienced manager, if he is not a fool, 
knows before he goes to weigh the days’ 
gathering, whether the slaves will have 
higher or lower weights than usual; and 
when, with good cotton and a moist, calm 
day, he finds they have generally raised 
their weights, he only flogs those who 
have not come up in proportion to the 
whole gang. When the cotton is scarce, 
or the gathering is made more difficult 
by a storm, or it the day is windy or cold, 
the overseer looks for smaller weights, 
and flogs only those who have fallen off 
the most. In the case I am relating, 
there was but little cotton in the field, 
owing to the small crop raised that year, 
which caused the slaves to keep up more 
closely with the cotton as it opened, than 
they would have done had there been a 
good crop. Thus slavery, the one man pow¬ 
er in our Republic, places our brother man 
and sister woman under the dominion of 
stupid tyrants, who do not understand 
the business they follow, although they 
boastof bringing the brain and intelligence 
of the master race to control the slave 
race, and m^ke their sinew and muscle 
useful to the world at large. It is my 
opinion, however, that Oz would have sup¬ 
ported himself, where his master and over¬ 
seer would both have perished, had. all of 
them been left to their own resources of 
brain and muscle. 

I madetwo cropson Mr.H.’s plantation, 
not counting the one which 1 finished 
gathering this season ; the last of them the 
largest ever made in that parish. In doing 
this, I committed many cruelties ; never¬ 
theless, these poor over-driven slaws, 
two years afterwards, were glad to see 
me return and take charge of them again 







28 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


Sometime after my return to this plan¬ 
tation, and when there was a prospect of 
a large cotton crop, I overheard two 
slaves making some remarks about it. 
“Aunt Viney,” said a boy of about six¬ 
teen years of age, “how is it dat when 
Massa John come here, we is got so much 
cotton, cotton on da ground, cotton on 
da turn-row, and we got no time to pick 
it up? Den we got so much peas, pun- 
kins and potatoes dat we donna know 
v 7 hich to eat fust.” 

Viney answered, “Dat how Massa 
John work head work, and make nigger 
travil when it is da right to travil. Den 
when he once got ahead ob da grass, you 
see how he is got no more trouble. Dis 
is how we work light arter dat, an’ we 
loose up da dirt more times about da cot¬ 
ton. But I tell you, boy, dat nigger is 
got to work for Massa John till he am safe 
from grass, an’ he crop is pitched; den he 
lay in da shade, an’ read he paper.’’ 

“Dat am fact, aunt Viney, cause one 
time when you look about you, dar is he 
certain sure; den again you want to see 
him, you is got to go to he house fust; 
den Massa. John is goin’ to whip you in a 
minute, if he got you good, but if he not 
got you good, he let you go. Dat toder 
obersee not got dat much sense. ’Cause 
when he goin’ to whip you certain sure, 
den you not know when he is goin’ to 
whip you, an’ you spect it all da time. 
But, aunt Viney, I spect it all da time 
when we break up da ground, ’cause we 
not custom to break up deep like we do 
dis time.” 

“No, you spare you team, an’ make 
hoe nigger kill da grass. Ah! boy,-1 hel p 
Massa John to do dat, ’cause I is talkin’ 
ole nigger, an’ Massa John listen to me, 
chile. Some time he say dat how I is ole 
fool, but some time he say, good ole wo¬ 
man, I give you a bowl of sugar for dat 
idee. An’ dat is da cause why we is now 
got so much cotton, wegetables an’ corn.” 

“But, aunt Viney, when we break up 
deep afore, our team come down poor 
like dogs; but dis time da mule fat like 
butter.” 

“ Dat am trufe, chile ; an I s’pose you 
member how you grumble ’bout Massa 
John make you feed your mule; when I 
tell you to shut you mouf, cause Massa 


John is right; he is goin’ to kill da grass 
by break up da groun’ good, and not 
goin’ to kill hoe nigger.’’ 

“ Dat is da trute ; we grumble ’cause 
we not know why da mule got so much 
’tention afore. We put corn in da trough 
and fodder in da rack, an’ da mule help 
his sef to much as he please; but Massa 
John make us clean da trough good, an 
den we give da mule a little an’ a little 
all da time. Den at night he come* again 
wid he light, an’ he bother us all 
da time, all da blessed time, aunt, 
Viney. Den he make us water da 
mule afore we goin’ to bed, ’cause he 
say dat how da mule want water when 
he done eat he supper; den he lay down, 
an’ he rest good.” 

“ Go an’ tend to your work, boy; 
’cause when you not spect da oversee, 
den he is right arter you, I tell you. 
Toder oversee goin’ send you, an’ when 
you foolin’ you time away, den he whip 
you, an’ trufe da nigger is whipt, but he 
loss time is not come back. Massa John 
is goin’ send you too, but he is right ar¬ 
ter you, I tell you, boy, an’ he not long 
afore he cornin’ now.” 

I do not mean to screen myself because 
contact with slavery makes men cruel 
and overbearing; but unless a slave re¬ 
sisted me, I generally listened to him in 
a cool manner before I Hogged him, and 
if he could show any good reason why 
he should not be flogged, he escaped the 
punishment. Of course, I never had a 
just cause when I flogged a slave—only 
such cause as is considered just among 
thieves and robbers of other men’s labor. 

I once had a powerful mulatto slave, be¬ 
longing to Mr. J. before mentioned, laid 
down to be flogged for stealing a shoat. 
Wash begged me to hear him Speak for 
himself. I granted his request, but told 
him that he was a bad fellow, and had 
once stabbed his overseer, as I under¬ 
stood. He acknowledged the fact, but 
said that if some man was to be found 
with my wife, I should want to kill him 
too. He went on to say, “ True, sir, I 
did kill master’s hog, but I am a large 
man, and require more food than others 
require. When you give me tasks of 
ditching, or making fence-rails, you give 
me the largest task, but you don’t give 






Inside Views of Slavery. 


29 


me any more meat than you give the 
others” “Well, sir,” I asked, “ how much 
meat per week will satisfy you?” “Well, 
you know, Master John, that when you 
task other slaves to cut and split one 
hundred, a hundred and ten, fifteen, 
twenty, or twenty-five rails, you task me 
a hundred and thirty ; when you task us 
at cleaning out ditches a spit deeper, you 
give some thirty-five, some forty yards, 
but you task me at forty-five ; and if you 
will give me five pounds of meat per 
week, I will kill no more hogs.” I told 
him to rise and go about his business, and 
I would give him five pounds of meat 
every Sunday morning. I had no occa¬ 
sion to fear that Wash would stab me 
after that; and it has astonished me, in 
somq^of my reflecting moments, to study 
the forgiving disposition which is charac¬ 
teristic of the slaves. 


CHAPTER XI. 

History of a Preacher’s Slaughter. 

My cook on this plantation was a 
splendid woman, and an honest, trust¬ 
worthy slave. She was less than forty 
years of age, a bright mulatto of medium 
size, with a mild, intelligent countenance ; 
her hair was long, with just sufficient 
kinks to add to its beauty, and no lady 
need covet a more perfect figure. But 
the cruel and licentious abominations of 
slavery had destroyed her happiness, from 
the day that she began to bloom into 
womanhood, and will continue to destroy 
it until the grave shall hide her from the 
oppressor, and her beautiful but welted 
and scarred body shall mix and moulder 
with its mother earth. 

I once questioned her about her parent¬ 
age and native State, when she informed 
me that she was born in Virginia; her 
mother being a mulatto slave, and her 
father a white man, who was a local 
preacher in the Methodist church. Her 
mother was sold when she was quite 
young, and shortly after she herself was 
sold, and taken to Fort Smith, Arkansas. 


She could not positively say that her 
mother was sold because her mistress was 
jealous of her, but she thought that was 
the cause. Her new master made her the 
victim of his lust when she was very 
young, and threatened to sell her off to a 
cotton plantation, if she let her mistress 
know what he was doing. Her mistress 
was a kind lady, and was very good to 
her generally; she taught her to sew, and 
dressed her in good style. She was too 
young then to understand fully the great 
wrong she was committing against her 
kind mistress; but it would have made 
no difference if she had understood it, for 
her master was a stern man, and she 
would not have dared to resist. She was 
also very much afraid of being sold to a 
plantation, to be flogged by the bad over¬ 
seers. Her mistress had another house 
slave with whom her master was intimate,' 
but beloved her the most, which so roused 
the jealousy of her fellow slave, that, out 
of revenge to her rival, she informed their 
mistress. This caused the lady to w ? atch 
her husband and the young s’ave, until at 
length she caught them. This produced 
a quarrel between her master and mis¬ 
tress, and the latter did nothing but weep 
for a long time afterwards. At length, 
her master being absent from home, her 
mistress took advantage of the opportu¬ 
nity, and ordered her fellow-slave to strip 
her, and tie her hands and feet. Her mis¬ 
tress then whipped her until she became 
exhausted, when she ordered the other to 
continue flogging her, while she went to 
get some fire to burn her with. 

But I cannot give the revolting details 
of this cruel punishment. I have fre¬ 
quently heard of jealous mistresses burn¬ 
ing their slaves in a’ cruel manner, but 
propriety forbids me to describe the mode, 
for the same reasons that I cannot give 
the vile slang used by slave-drivers to¬ 
wards their female slaves. The lady of a 
very respectable planter said in my hear¬ 
ing, that the best mode of bringing the 
truth out of slaves that she had ever tried, 
was to drop hot sealing-wax upon some 
tender portion of the body, drop after 
drop, until their lies were finished, and 
then the truth would follow; and there is 
no doubt, from the character of her hus¬ 
band, and his known attachment to his 







30 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


female slaves, that she had occasion to 
improve her art in obtaining disclosures 
of this kind. Mr. G. F. Train, in the 
“Facts” he has published concerning sla¬ 
very, says that ladies put out the eyes of 
their female slaves by jobbing them with 
knitting-needles, roasted them in ovens, 
etc. This was in the West India Islands, 
and not in America, says the author of the 
“Facts.” But slavery is the same brutal, 
licentious abomination now that it was 
then ; jealousy is the same green-eyed 
monster now as then ; and human nature 
is the same fallen, depraved human nature 
here that it was in the West India Isl¬ 
ands. Every plantation has its own pri¬ 
vate graveyard, and is walled around 
with its gag-laws, here as it was there; 
and if there is any slight change, it con¬ 
sists in acting with more caution and pri¬ 
vacy than slaveholders formerly thought 
necessary. Let those acquainted with 
the manner in which jealousy converts 
almost into demons some of the softer 
sex, when their rival is an equal and in¬ 
dependent of them, consider how it must 
be when the mistress, a high southern 
lady, ascertains that her slave, a low de¬ 
graded thing, a chattel to be bought and 
sold like a brute, has marred her happi 
ness, destroyed her domestic peace, turn¬ 
ed her love into hatred, and left her no 
bosom whereon she may lay her head, and 
weep over the trouble which has sunk so 
deeply into her soul! At first, of course, 
it causes her heart to faint within her; 
then it arouses every passion and devilish 
feeling to be found in depraved human 
nature, until boiling with rage and a de¬ 
termination to avenge herself, she springs 
like a tiger upon her victim ; and the fact 
that her rival i3 a helpless, unprotected 
thing, only adds fuel to her demoniacal 
fury, as the poor creature offers her un¬ 
availing prayer : “O, my dear mistress! 

Pray have mercy this time! Pray, my 
mistress, have mercy, mercy, mercy! My 
master threatened to send me off to the 
plantation, under the bad overseer, that 
he did, my mistress, or I would never 
have done what I have! O, my dear 
mistres-*, do show mercy to this poor 
creature, that is placed between two 
whips, the whip if I do, and the whip if 
I don’t! What shall I do, oh! what on 


earth shall I do ? O, my nvstress, my 
mistress, mercy, mercy, mercy!’’ 

This poor slave girl, as soon as her mis¬ 
tress had gone to bring the fire, w r as so 
frightened at the though of being burned, 
that she broke loose, and in her frenzy 
ran to the kitchen for a knife to cgt her 
throat. She seized a dull table knife, and 
did her utmost to sever her windpipe and 
the jugular vein, but the instrument be¬ 
ing dull, she did not have time to accom¬ 
plish her purpose, before her fellow-slave 
caught her and snatched the knife away. 
A permanent large scar was lefc upon her 
throat. Soon after the wound healed up, 
she was sold to a single gentleman, a 
merchant living on the Arkansas river. 
He told her he had purchased her for his 
wife, on account of her beauty; and#f she 
would behave herself, he would give her 
her freedom when he married. She lived 
a loDg time with him, as his wife and 
housekeeper, hoping that her master 
would at length marry, so that she might 
be free, and go in search of her poor 
mother. In giving me this account, she 
shed tears when she mentioned her moth¬ 
er. But amidst her hopes of obtaining 
freedom for herself, and then working to 
purchase her mother, she was shocked to 
learn that her unfeeling master had traded 
her off for dry goods ! Her new master 
told her to get herself ready to go down 
to Mississippi; that he had purchased her 
for his wife, and should make her the 
mistress of a large plantat on which he 
owned. While going down the Missis¬ 
sippi, he ordered her to come into his 
state room of nights. But when she ar¬ 
rived at the end of her journey, she found 
that her wealthy planter was only a clerk 
of Messrs. N. &. D., her real owners, to 
whom he then turned her over. She 
was taken to Mr. N.’s residence, where 
she was kept for a house servant. Here 
she had a little peace, as no one offered 
to take a wrong advantage of her. But 
she had now lost all her hopes of freedom 
and of freemg her poor mother, if she 
could have found her. 

In the course of time, she was sold to 
her present master, who purchased her 
for a seamstress, and for his wife, or rath¬ 
er for one of his many wives. After 
some years, he opened a new cotton plan- 







Inside Views of Slavery. 


31 


tation in the Louisiana swamp, and sent 
her there to keep house for his overseer, 
and to make clothing for his slaves. Her 
master told the overseer, in her presence, 
that he wanted to keep up his stock of 
slaves of the pure African blood without 
any mixture, as it paid well to raise slaves 
at present prices; he therefore expected 
him to keep out of the slaves’quarters 
of nights; but he could use his own plea¬ 
sure with respect to his mulatto house¬ 
keeper. She was the best-looking woman 
on the plantation, consequently had to 
submit to all the overseers that managed 
the place ; and if ordered to do so, she 
must bring them some other one to suit 
their fancy, from the cabins or from the 
neighboring plantations. The overseers 
generally allow their cooks to visit occa¬ 
sionally, unless jealousy prevents their 
doing so. One of the overseers having 
permitted this woman to visit a neighbor¬ 
ing plantation, upon which such visits 
were not forbidden, she became acquaint¬ 
ed with an old Baptist slave, who preach¬ 
ed Jesus to her in an attractive manner. 
“ O chile,’’ said the old slave, “ if you on¬ 
ly knew my bressed Jesus, you love him 
forever. Oh ! dat sweet Jesus, dat dear 
Jesus, he name make dis ole slave jump 
wid joy in all her trouble. Quit your 
badness, chile, and den seek dat sweet 
Jesus, an’ you never sorry ; no, no, when 
all da trouble come upon you, chile, den 
my bressed Jesus is wid you, an’ he never 
leave you, chile, no, never ” I am well 
acquain ed with that old Baptist slave, 
and she is always happy in her religious 
experience. Her exhortations were not 
lost upon the housekeeper, who now de¬ 
termined to submit to a life of prostitu¬ 
tion with the overseers no longer. This 
determination brought the most revenge¬ 
ful persecution upon her, and she was 
flogged and abused till she concluded to 
run away, and beg*protection of her mas¬ 
ter. Ills residence was some forty miles 
distant, and she had to cross the Missis¬ 
sippi river. She selected a dark, rainy 
night, that she might the more easily 
dodge any one who should meet or over¬ 
take her. She left the plantation about 
ten o’clock, when all was quiet, and after 
traveling two.miles, had to cross a wide 
stream, called in Louisiana a bayou The 


ferry-boat was lying on the opposite 
side of the stream, but the ferryman had 
a rope stretched across for the conveni¬ 
ence of pulling his boat over, in place of 
oars. She took advantage of the rope, and 
dragging herself along by it, hand over 
hand, at length succeeded in getting 
across. Her escape from the alligators, 
while crossing the stream, was a wonder¬ 
ful preservation, as most of the bayous 
are well stocked with these dangerous 
animals, which I have seen pull a full- 
grown hog under ; and this one in particu¬ 
lar was a noted resort'for them, being 
situated at the foot of a shallow lake, a 
large portion of which was covered with 
reeds. She came out on the opposite 
side of the bayou wet and cold, and made 
her way through a lonely swamp which is 
inhabited with bears, wolves, catamounts, 
and deadly snakes. She made the settle¬ 
ment on the other side just as day broke, 
and then hunted for a hollow gum log, in 
which to conceal herself during the day. 
She found one where she supposed she 
would be safe tiil night, when she hoped 
to get some slave to cross her over the 
Mississippi river, having a little money 
with her to pay for crossing. Before 
night, however, the dogs found her, and 
she was obliged to creep out of her hid- 
iog place, and return to the hateful over¬ 
seer and the home of her prostitution. 

The cold which she caught that night 
settled in her eyes, and when I last saw 
her, she was nearly blind. Whenever she 
complained or excused herself for not 
having done any thing properly, she was 
cursed, and told that her own rascality 
had brought her affliction upon her. 
However, she was living in the hope that 
she should one day cross over Jordan 
and escape from her cruel oppressors, as 
she had safely crossed over the bayou 
and escaped from the jaws of the lurking 
alligators. 




32 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


CHAPTER XII 

Breadful Death—a Family Sketch. 

I was one day sent for in great haste 
to go over and see my nearest neighbor. 
I asked the slave that came after me 
what was the matter with Mr L ? He 
answered that he was very sick, and old 
Harriet, his housekeeper, said the house 
was full of devils come to burn him up on 
a log heap. When I arrived, my neigh¬ 
bor was gasping for breath, and died 
shortly afterwards. I questioned the old 
slave about the house being full of devils, 
and she told me that the previous Sun¬ 
day, while the slaves were all about their 
cabins, they were told that Mr. L. had 
gone to bed sick, when old Lize prayed 
that he might never leave his house any 
more, until he left it feet foremost. This 
was told to Mr. L. by his fancy girl, when 
he immediately sent for his black driver, 
and the plantation carpenter, a slave. He 
told the driver to give old Lize a severe 
flogging, then to fasten her feet in the 
stocks, and keep her there till he ordered 
her out. He then directed the carpenter 
to take her measure, and make her coffin 
in the quickest kind of time. On the fol¬ 
lowing day he called to Harriet, and bid 
her drive every infernal nigger out of 
that house. Harriet told him that she 
was the only nigger in the house, but he 
swore that she was a liar, and that the 
house was full of niggers, who were build¬ 
ing up a large log heap, and when it was 
finished, the rascals intended to put him 
on it, and burn him up. Old Harriet, 
who, like most other slaves, was super- 
stitous, became frightened and almost 
ready to drop down ; but she had to 
make a pretense of driving out the ni 
gers, as the old man had his pistols at the 
head of his bed, and threatened to shoot 
her, if she did not drive them put in 
short order. When she found he was 
growing weak, she sent for me to come 
over and see him, as she dll not. know 
what to do, and was afraid to stop m the 
house with the wficked old man. Among 
the last words he spoke, he begged for 
some one to come and save him from 
those niggers, and asked if he had no 
friends in the world to save him from be¬ 
ing burned up on that log heap. 


Old Lize was let out of the stocks, and 
the coffin which had been placed by her 
side to bury her in, was burned up by 
the slaves, I believe, before the old man 
left his house feet foremost, according to 
the imprecation that Lize had uttered in 
her prayer. 

The following sketch from southern life 
came mostly within my own knowledge ; 
the secret portion of it was told to me by 
one of the actors in the deception, who 
was himself a near neighbor of mine, 
while I lived on this plantation. 

I had worked on Mr. Ii.’s plantation 
shortly after I first went to the South. 
He had only a few slaves at this time, 
but he had a valuable tract of land, which 
he sold for a high price, and used the 
money in purchasing slaves. He then set¬ 
tled back in the swamp on Congress land, 
and, in twenty years from that time, be¬ 
came the owner of above one hundred 
slaves, besides a large plantation, well 
improved, on which he had built one of 
the best dwelling-houses in that section 
of country. His first wife was dead, and 
he had married a beautiful young lady ; 
thus he had, in his pretty wife and large 
plantation, all that even the most san¬ 
guine secessionist might desire. But I 
have noticed that death, in choosing 
among living men, seems to select those 
who have just said to their soul, How 
rest perfectly satbfied, because I have se¬ 
cured that which I have desired and toil¬ 
ed for. 

Mr. It’s place, like most other freshly 
opened plantations, had a large grave¬ 
yard, which hid for the present a number 
of welted and scarred victims, who had 
labored hard to clear that heavily timber¬ 
ed land, to fence and ditch it, and get 
out the timber for his large and commo¬ 
dious buildings. But he had not yet buried 
all his stiffened up and broken down 
slaves. Females are liable to become dis¬ 
eased in many ways by the straining labor 
of opening such places. Mr. H. had one 
who suffered so much from a prolapsus, 
that she had to remain a large por¬ 
tion of her time in a horizontal position. 
Her master, tired with doctoring her and 
losing her time, at length ordered her to 
go to work, and if she died, to die and be 
-—. It was not long before she was 








Inside Views of Slavery. 


33 


brought home to her cabin worse than 
before, which so enraged her whisky- 
stimulated master, that he swore she had 
done it on purpose. I shall spare my 
readers the harrowing details of the cruel 
mutilation she then underwent, and widch 
it is wonderful that she survived for a sin¬ 
gle day. How long she lived afterwards 
I do not know, having asked for no par¬ 
ticulars at the time I was told of the af¬ 
fair, and having no idea then that I should 
ever write an account of these horrid 
cruelties. 

Soon afterwards Mr. R.was taken sick, 
and died after a few days’ illness. The 
young and beautiful widow he had left 
was now rich, and able to choose a hus¬ 
band to suit herself, in her second mar¬ 
riage. In making her first choice, she 
was poor, and could not do as she pleas¬ 
ed. A few years passed over, and an en¬ 
terprising northern merchant, who kept 
a store in that neighborhood, was engag¬ 
ed to be married to her. She had doubt¬ 
less concluded that he was free from the 
common vice of that country, from which 
she had suffered so much during her first 
husband’s life. But some one now re¬ 
vealed to her the fact that he was living 
with his mulatto housekeeper as his wife. 
The next time her intended husband 
made a visit to her house, she insulted 
him, and told him that his company was 
no longer desirable. 

But this was too good a chance to be 
lost without a struggle, he therefore re¬ 
fused to leave the house till he had re¬ 
ceived a full explanation. She then told 
him what she had heard concerning his 
conduct at home. He calmly replied that 
an enemy had done this, and he would 
prove to her satisfaction that it was false. 
He then told her that one of his neigh¬ 
bor’s mulatto slaves had been visiting his 
housekeeper constantly, and they were 
going to be married the next Sunday. 
He invited her to drive up to his house 
on Sunday, and question the slaves, see 
their marriage, and convince herself that 
he had been scandalized. After gaining 
her consent to drive up on Sunday as pro¬ 
posed, he excused himself, saying that he 
had urgent business, and must leave. He 
then rode up to see my friend, before 
mentioned, explained to him the whole 


-- ♦ - 

affair, and begged him to help him out of 
his difficulty by permitting his mulatto 
slave to marry his housekeeper on the 
following Sunday, and by allowing him to 
come early, that he might instruct him 
how to answer any questions that might 
be asked. This favor was granted, and 
of course his own female slave durst not 
do otherwise than obey her master’s or¬ 
ders. Sunday came ; a splendid carriage 
drove up with the lady* who had an op¬ 
portunity of questioning the slaves, saw 
them married, partook of their wedding 
dinner, returned home perfectly satisfied, 
and shortly afterwards sat down at her 
own wedding dinner with the man w r ho 
had thus abused her confidence. The 
beautiful, straight-haired mulatto slave 
was sold and sent to another country, 
and my friend’s slave lost his wife a few 
weeks after their marriage. 

Slaveholders and overseers, unrestrain¬ 
ed by any of the customs of society, be¬ 
come perfectly shameless in their licen¬ 
tious practices. Young females are called 
up to dance before them in the most in¬ 
decent and exposed manner; no respect 
is paid to family connections; mothers, 
daughters and sisters, a 1 are fish for then- 
nets. But what else can be expected, 
where men carry the lash and possess un¬ 
controlled power ? What on earth is to 
restrain them, when the female cannot 
protect her own virtue, and when it makes 
her more honorable among her female 
slaves to be a white man’s favorite ? I 
might cite many examples from those 
with whom I became well acquainted. 
Mr. S. is a wealthy slaveholder, whom I 
heard declare that it made no difference 
to him what the relations of the slaves 
were; mothers, daughters, or sisters, they 
all came at his call. Mr. A. and Mr. G. 
were utterly shameless, the latter particu¬ 
larly, in getting up nude dances among 
his slaves. But I am forbidden to expose 
all his outrageous doings; slavery will 
never be fully known in this world ; its 
deeds cannot be written, they cannot be 
published, they could not be read! 

Mr. W. told me that his employer, who 
was a wealthy planter, had for years kept 
a handsome mulatto slave for his mistress, 
and when her two daughters bloomed 
into womanhood, he lived with them in 





u 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


__ * __ , -- - 

the same manner; they were not, how¬ 
ever, his own daughters. This slavehold¬ 
er was a married man, but his wife did 
not live on the plantation. I knew one 
slaveholder, the son ot a wealthy amalga¬ 
mator, who owned eight or ten of his half 
sisters. He followed in the steps of his 
father, and, I have reason to believe, paid 
no respect to the relationship between 
himself and these half-sisters. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

Struggles with Conscience, 

I quit my last situation on account of 
salary, and engaged with Capt. P. for 
the year 1853. My future was now 
about to be decided for weal or for woe. 
Through the example of the company 
with whom I had been associated for 
years, drinking had become with me a 
constant daily habit. When at home 
and at my business, I never indulged my- 
* self with more than a moderate dram, un¬ 
less I was at leisure and friends called to 
see me, when it would have been consid¬ 
ered unsocial not to sit down and take a 
few drinks with them. Of course, my 
neighbor must do the same when I call¬ 
ed on him. But it was well for the 
slaves under my charge, that when whis¬ 
ky had banished cool judgment and con¬ 
fused my brain, I was more than usually 
good-natured; and it would have been 
difficult at such a time to*rouse my anger 
sufficiently to make me flog or abuse 
them. Indeed, they would frequently se¬ 
lect such opportunities to procure some 
favor that I should not have granted, un¬ 
less I had been excited with whisky. 

I had no longing for repeated doses of 
the poisonous stuff; therefore, to enable 
me the better to resist the constant urg 
ing of friends, I resolved that I would 
never, amongst any company whatever, 
take more than a single drink. This re¬ 
solve preserved me from taking a “ drop 
too much ” for a considerable length of 
time. But upon one occasion an over 
seer urged me to drink with him, after I 
had taken my stipulated glass. I apolo¬ 
gized for refusing, and explained to him 


my reasons; but he continued to press me 
the more, and at length began to prepare 
for a fight. He swore that I should eith¬ 
er drink with him, or whip him, or be 
whipped myself. He was a fighting man, 
and was shot dead in a fray a short time 
afterwards. I preferred drinking . to 
fighting such a ruffian, and in settling 
the difficulty which had sprung up, re¬ 
peated drinks were taken, until whisky 
ruled as monarch of that slavedriving 
crowd. None but those who have lived 
in that section of country bordering on 
Red river, can form any idea of a drunk¬ 
en crowd of slavedrivers, all of them arm¬ 
ed to the teeth with bowie knives and pis¬ 
tols; and should the lower regions be 
free from any other punishment than that 
of dwelling to all eternity with those 
blasphemous, obscene, slang-using, con¬ 
science-seared, time-hardened sinners, it 
would be well worth living an upright, 
godly life, to escape from such a society 
as theirs. From this time I generally 
drank too much, whenever I fell in with 
a drinking company, until a Baptist lady, 
with whom I had long been acquainted, 
shamed me out of it, and I quit drinking 
altogether. This lady and her family 
have since quit the South, and have set¬ 
tled in a free State. She told me the 
causes of their leaving were, first, that 
they hated slavery, and did not want to 
live among it any longer ; second, she felt 
satisfied in her own mind that in a few 
years the slaves would rise and murder 
them all. Her counsel was the means of 
saving me, for I had, at times, for sever¬ 
al years, been under deep convictions, and 
could scarcely throw them off without 
the assistance of the exhilarating dram, 
to which I generally resorted when con¬ 
science or trouble of any kind annoyed 
me. But this abandoning of my former 
practice compelled me to shun drinking 
crowds, which made me unpopular; be¬ 
cause when any of the company brought 
up charges against me, 1 was not there to 
defend myself. 

That section of country is chiefly a con¬ 
tinuation of large plantations, managed, 
generally, by overseers without families. 
The settlements are mostly confined to 
the higher lands, on the lakes, rivers and 
bayous; and between these settlements 








Inside Views oe Slavery. 


85 


lie extensive low palmetto lands, which 
are commonly overflowed in the spring of 
the year. This year I had much less 
crowding than usual. The plantation 
being flat and not properly ditched, the 
July rains, which were unusally heavy, 
pouring down for ten or twelve days 
without intermission, scalded ihe cotton, 
so that I only made about half the cus¬ 
tomary crop. Consequently, there was 
no necessity of overworking during the 
gathering season, and as Capt. P. intend¬ 
ed to remove his slaves from the place 
when the crop was gathered, there were 
no improvements to be made, such as 
building, ditching, fencing or clearing 
land. During the summer, I suffered 
from a dangerous attack ot fever, and, 
contrary to my usual custom, was obliged 
to send for a physician. I continued to 
get worse until I called in the second, 
who checked the fever, and I recovered. 
This near approach to death alarmed me, 
and I now had no whisky to assist me in 
overcoming my convictions. When 
death looked me in the face, I had no 
hope ; all was dark and gloomy; I had 
no religious friend to give me advice, nor 
did I know of one Christian among those 
fifty to sixty slaves. I durst not look 
for mercy from that Savior whom 1 had 
so long rejected, and indeed my fevered 
brain unfitted me for any preparation for 
death. I however resolved that If I 
should be spared, I wou d trifle with my 
eternal interests no longer. But when I 
recovered, I found so many obstacles in 
the way of carrying out my resolution, 
that I began to stagger, and think of post 
poning my purpose to some more con¬ 
venient season. First, I was in embarrass¬ 
ed circumstances* having broken down a 
few years previous, and consequently 
thought I must continue at my oversee¬ 
ing for several years longer ; and it ap¬ 
peared to me that it would be not only 
impossible, but an insult to high heaven, 
and to that compassionate Savior through 
whose merits alone my sins could be par¬ 
doned, for me to hope for mercy, so long 
as I followed that unmerciful occupation, 
and carried that cruel lash. Then I had 
toiled long at my present business, and 
had now gained a reputation as a good 
cropper and a good practical manager of 


slave stock, having experience in doctor¬ 
ing men, women and children, and being 
well posted up on the best mode of treat¬ 
ing our swamp fevers. 

I had previously leaned towards infi¬ 
delity, but a candid examination of the 
proofs of holy writ had driven me from 
that ground. I now commenced exam¬ 
ining the scriptural authority for slavery. 
I purchased and read Fletcher’s Studies 
on Slavery, Dr. Este’s Defense of Slavery, 
and Dr. Cartwright’s Letters to the Rev. 
Dr. Winans. The latter went to show 
not only that God was the author of slav¬ 
ery, but that the anatomy of the African 
proved that God had created him for a 
slave. I now felt satisfied that God bad 
specially adapted the negroes to a state 
of servitude, and that he was actually the 
author of slavery. But I could not feel 
satisfied, after an examination of the 
Christian platform, laid down in the Ser¬ 
mon on the Mount, and scattered through 
the four Gospels, also repeated and con¬ 
stantly enforced in the writings of the 
apostles, that it was right and Christian 
to drive and flog slaves as my duty to my 
employer, and to my own reputation as 
an overseer, compelled me to drive and 
flog them. I also concluded that it was 
wrong for the southern church to send 
missionaries where Christians of other 
countries could send them, while neglect¬ 
ing the ignorant plantation slaves; that 
it was inexcusable in professing Christian 
slaveholders thus to disregard the eternal 
interests of their slaves ; and that if the 
Bible was true, and God had sent his 
Son into this world to redeem the human 
race from eternal death, then it was an 
outrage for slave-owners to whip religion 
off their plantations, and thus shut from 
their souls the light of heaven. When I 
examined the fruits of Christianity, as 
they were exhibited within the circle of 
my own acquaintance, my old doubts of 
its heavenly origin would return. I be¬ 
lieved that Paine, Hobbes, and Voltaire 
were men possessed of large liberty-lov¬ 
ing souls; and might not their views of 
one God, the Father of all men and things, 
b^ more correct, more just and right, 
than this wicked oppressive Christianity ? 
Did not oppressive kings and pleasure- 
loving priests concoct this Christian sys- 









36 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


tem, that they might oppress the world 
by binding the conscience ? I then took 
a survey of the doings of professing 
Christians, and compared their conduct 
with their book. But the book would 
own no oppressor; and yet, according to 
my experience, those who professed to be 
guided by that book were all oppressors 
of the most outrageous character. 

Mr. J. was a member of the Methodist 
church, asked a blessing at his table, and 
had daily prayer in his family. In speak¬ 
ing of his zeal, Mr. C., his overseer, told 
me that he would blow off his surplus 
religion at their camp meetings much in 
the same manner as Mississippi high pres¬ 
sure steamers blow off their escape steam. 
I once attended preaching at a school- 
house near to Mr. J.’s cotton gin-house. 
It was during the cotton gathering sea 

son, and while the meeting was going on, 
the day’s gathering of cotton was being 
weighed at the gin-house. The slaves 
had fallen off in their weights, and Mr. C. 
applied the stimulating lash freely. The 
preacher had a strong voice, but Mr. C.’s 
lash had a stronger, and the cries of the 
poor flogged slaves were more impres¬ 
sive to me than any thing which the 
preacher said. That night I saw the 
overseer, and asked him how he could 
for shame disturb that meeting by flog¬ 
ging his slaves so severely ? He replied 
that I must be very green, if I supposed 
that whipping a nigger or two would dis 
turb that meeting; no, no, it reminded 
them that King Cotton reigned below, 
and King Jesus above, and that their 
pockets were being replenished with the 
useful, while they were seeking the need¬ 
ful from above. Mr. C. was from the free 
States, and understood matters and things 
connected wi h slavery and Christianity; 
consequently, he ridiculed their religion, 
as intelligent men generally do. Mr. J. 
was an obliging neighbor, and might be 
called one of the better sort of men, so 
far as white people were concerned. But 
when it came to the slaves, he was as hot 
as red pepper. 

Mr. E. and most of his family belonged 
to the Methodist church. He was a hard 
and cruel slave-owner, and instead of seek¬ 
ing to be replenished with fresh supplies 
of a heavenly spirit, he was accustomed 


to resort very frequently to the brandy 
bottle, and I presume supplied the lack of 
the one by copious draughts from the 
other. His son, who was a chip of the 
old block in the matter of slave driving, 
was his father’s overseer. On one occa¬ 
sion, when bringing a recaptured fugitive 
slave home from the parish jail, a distance 
of over twenty miles, he secured the fugi¬ 
tive’s hands with the hand-cuffs, then tied 
one end of a rope to the victim’s body 
and the other end to the pommel of his 
Spanish saddle, and ordered him to trot 
for home, where he would find a fugitive’s 
hell, to balance accounts with the fugi¬ 
tive’s heaven, that he had lately been en¬ 
joying. The slave became exhausted 
with trotting to keep up with his youDg 
master’s horse, and fell to the ground, 
when this son of a professing Cnristian 
family dragged his victim for considerable 
distance over the rough swamp road. It 
was late at night when he reached the 
plantation, so he locked the fugitive to 
one of the logs of a log cabin, and told 
him to prepare his hide for a fugitive’s flog¬ 
ging early in the morning. But when 
morning came, and the young tyrant went 
to settle accounts with his slave, he found 
that his victim had preferred to meet his 
Creator uncalled, rather than remain and 
receive a fugitive’s punishment. He con¬ 
sequently lost his morning’s frolic over 
the flogging of his victim, for even a 
slave driver sees no fun in floggingadead 
nigger, any more than Mr. T. did in 
knocking the irons off the woman whom 
he had murdered, after she was dead. 

I went one day to hear the Rev. Mr. 
D , a noted preacher, and elder in the 
Methodist church, preach one of his big 
sermons. When he was about to wind 
up his discourse, he addressed the few 
slaves who were present in the following 
manner : “ Ignorance will be no excuse 

for you, slaves, in that day, remember! 
Ye have sufficient knowledge to judge a 
wicked professor of religion ; indeed, ye 
generally notice such a one quicker than 
oihers do ; therefore, God will hold you 
responsible for the light which he has 
given you, remember!” Who can won¬ 
der that slaves, with the examples they 
see before them, should have a poor opin¬ 
ion of their master’s religion, and also of 




Inside Views of Slavery. 


the reverend preachers who use the 
Scriptures as a cloak to cover up iniquity 
and oppression ? 


CHAPTER XIV. 

g ave driving Abandon* d—and Resumed. 

I read, in a southern church paper, an 
extract from a letter taken, I think, from 
the New-York Observer, that surprised 
me considerably. When I take up a po¬ 
litical paper, I expect the editor may vary 
from the truth.a little, to bolster up his 
party, and to crush, if possible, the one 
to which he is opposed. But when I 
take up a religious paper, I expect to 
find the truth told, unless the editor 
may have been deceived. This extract 
boasted loudly of the religious privileges 
which the slaves had in my section of 
country, and wound up by stating that 
slaveholders employed resident ministers 
on their plantations. The parish, or 
county, in which I lived, was over fifty 
miles long, and thickly settled, for that 
region, with large plantations of-slaves. I 
counted up the churches which were in 
the parish, and found none. I then count¬ 
ed the number of preaching-places, and 
found five, including the court-house, and 
I may safely say that not thirty slaves at¬ 
tended any one of these meeting-houses 
upon an average. I found one widow 
lady who employed a resident minister, 
of the New-York Observer's church, at 
the rate of three hundred dollars per an¬ 
num, to preach to the slaves on two or 
three large plantations, while she paid 
her overseers at the rate of one thousand 
dollars per annum; and they drove these 
slaves as if the widow had determined to 
clear the minister’s salary, over and 
above the usual crop. One gin-wright, 
who was a local Methodist preacher, had 
just been whipped by the overseer, and 
ran off; and another gin-wright, who was 
a Baptist minister, was promised eighty 
dollars per annum for preaching at one of 
the school-houses, but when pay day 
came, he received less than thirty dollars. 

I was told that Mr. N., one of the over¬ 
seers of the afore-mentioned widow’s late 


3* 


husband, would flog as many as thirty 
slaves at a single cotton-weighing, and I 
once saw him flog nearly that number. 

Dr. R. was the most strictly religious 
man in that neighborhood, and gave es¬ 
pecial attention to the moral and religious 
wants of his slaves; but shortly after his 
death, the most promising of his sons flog¬ 
ged religion off the plantation, and lived 
openly with one of his female slaves as his 
wife. A near neighbor of mine at this 
time was, next to Dr. R., more attentive 
to the religious privileges of bis slaves 
than any other professor within my 
knowledge ; but his slave-dnving and 
crowding kept his religious fervor so cool, 
that when sitting up all night, in company 
with myself, with a dying sinner, who ex¬ 
pired the next morning, he never once 
named to him Jesus as the sinner’s hope. 
He would ask him how he felt, if he was 
any better, or if he wanted any assistance, 
but never asked him if he wanted his sins 
pardoned. 

Three Misses S., who were members 
of good standing in the Baptist church, 
kicked, whipped, knocked down, and 
abused a female slave so cruelly and con¬ 
stantly, that she at length committed sui¬ 
cide by drowning herself in the cistern. 

I was at a friend’s house one Sabbath 
morning, when one of his female slaves 
returned from church very much displeas¬ 
ed with the minister. I told her that I 
supposed he had been reproving her for 
her badness, which had offended her. 
She answered no, that would not have of¬ 
fended her, because that was his duty ; 
but as she was on her way home, he had 
passed her, in the company of some bad 
overseers, whom he was teaching the 
best mode of flogging slaves, and she was 
certain that she should never go to 
church any more. The Rev. Mr. E., 
wdiom I have mentioned before, was very 
capable of teaching an inexperienced over¬ 
seer the best method of crushing the man¬ 
hood out of a sl'ave. He was a cruel driv¬ 
er among his own slaves, who had no 
faith in white folks’ religion, because they 
saw that its fruits were bad. 

Mr. J., a very respectable mechanic, 
and a man of considerable property, told 
me that he had a large contract on Mr. 
T.’s plantation, and during the time he was 









3a 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


working on the place, he became .enamor¬ 
ed with Mr, T.’s good-looking mulatto 
house ser vant. Mr. T. was a wicked old 
man and a cruel driver, but his lady was 
an excellent mistress, and kind to the 
slaves. She was also a member of the 
Methodist church, and the young circuit 
rider made her house hishome when he was 
in that neighborhood. Mr. J. became 
jealous or the young minister, and report¬ 
ed his suspicions to Mr. T.,who was high¬ 
ly delighted at the opportunity of expos¬ 
ing a Methodist preacher, especially one 
of whom his wife had so high an opinion. 
She frequently tried to reform her hus- 
baud, and to bring him into the church, 
but he would curse the church, and swear 
that the only difference between himself 
and them was, that he was an open swear¬ 
er, and they were lying hypocrites, a 
character which he despised above all 
others. In this way he would shut her 
mouth, refusing to hear any thing more 
about her church and its nice young min¬ 
isters, whose chief business it was to in¬ 
gratiate themeelves into the good opinion 
of the ladies, that they might marry some 
wealthy slaveholder’s daughter, or, failing 
in this calculation, some slaveholder’s 
rich widow. Mr. T. and Mr. J. now set 
the tr^p to catch the young minister, and 
succeeded, to the great horror of poor 
Mrs. T., who saw that it would be useless 
to mention religion to her wicked slave¬ 
driving husband after that. 

My own self-interest, and the know¬ 
ledge of so much immorality and cruelty 
within the pale of the church, would 
doubtless have led me to abandon all 
thoughts of complying with my sick-bed 
resolve; but providentially for my eter¬ 
nal interests, while looking over some 
ol 1 books which I found on the plan¬ 
tation, my eye fell on the life of Hes¬ 
ter Ann Rogers, the wife of one of the 
early Methodist ministers. Alter read¬ 
ing a portion of this book, I knelc 
down and sought strength and grace to 
dijeot me aright, and to help me carry 
out my resolution. When my year ex¬ 
pired, on the last day of December, I 
quit my unrighteous occupation, and then, 
having renounced my wicked course of 
life and my soul destroying employment, 
I was enabled to approach the throne of 


grace and mercy, and to pray that God 
would for Christ’s sake pardon my many 
sins. Shortly afterwards I had reason 
to believe that my sins were forgiven, 
and my soul was filled with love to God 
and man. After .a short time I attached 
myself to the Baptist church. But as I 
could not sympathize with a pro-slavery 
church, I at length withdrew from it by 
letter. Yet there is no doubt in my mind 
that a few of the members of that church 
were Christians in earnest, as their atten¬ 
tion to the colored Baptist church proved 
that they had their Master’s cause near 
their hearts, and loved his down crushed 
little ones. But these \yere not slave 
owners. 

My former occupation of working on 
the plantations was extremely disagreea¬ 
ble to me now, because it brought me 
into constant contact with scenes of 
cruelty, and the blasphemous and slang¬ 
using overseers. I therefore removed to 
California, with the intention of settling 
in that State. But I was unable to stand 
hard labor and exposure, and after hav¬ 
ing been taken down with dysentery, 
which proves fatal to so many of the la¬ 
borers in that country, I returned to 
Louisiana. Thus I lost a year’s labor, 
besides my little means. My only chance 
now was to go to work on the planta¬ 
tions, which I did. Alter I had been in 
this kind of employment for some time, 
and finding that my lungs would not per¬ 
mit me to work in the dust of the old 
gin or mill, I one day met with two 
wealthy slaveholders, each of whom 
owned several plantations. Mr. G. told 
me that when I was tired of working at 
my trade, he would give me the manage¬ 
ment of his bayou plantation. Dr. D. 
asked me w 7 hy I refused to accept such 
an excellent offer, when I could not work? 
Mr. G. answered him that I had professed 
religion, turned fool, and quit flogging 
niggers,just when I had obtained a repu¬ 
tation as a good cropper. The Doctor 
answered that he thought my profession 
wou'd interfere with my uselulness as an 
overseer, and very likely I bad done 
right. The Doctor is a northern man 
with southern principles, and owns e’ght 
or ten large cotton plantations. But he 
was not so bad a master as some, and had 






Inside Views of Slavery. 


39 


strict rules to check the cruelty of his 
overseers. A few years before I com 
menced as overseer, I worked on one of 
the Doctor’s plantations, where the over¬ 
seer broke through his regulations with 
regard to the female slaves, one of these 
rules prohibiting the overseer from hav¬ 
ing more than one fancy girl. This was 
a foolish rule, because the man who car¬ 
ries the lash can make all such rules of no 
effect. The overseer’s house-keeper was 
a handsome mulatto woman, of about 
thirty years of age. She had one beauti¬ 
ful daughter twelve or thirteen years old. 
This was too great a temptation to be re¬ 
sisted by the licentious slavedriver; so 
he changed the mother for the daughter, 
which is no uncommon occurrence in 
slavedom. 

Brother I., of my church, remarked to 
me that I was an experienced overseer, 
used to the management of cotton plan¬ 
tations, aud now God had fully prepared 
me to do good as an overseer, and to 
show those who were opposed to religion 
among their slaves, that a plantation 
might be well and profitably managed 
where the slaves enjoyed religious privi¬ 
leges, and where the Sabbath was proper¬ 
ly resp cted. 1 answered that if I owned 
slaves myself, T could then manage them 
as I pleased, and might deal with them 
mercifully and kindly. But if he knew 
the driving which was required to make 
a ten-bile crop of cotton per slave, he 
would be convinced that there was neith¬ 
er justice, love,nor mercy belonging to 
slavery in the plantations. Some time 
after this, a gentleman for whom I had 
formerly done business, wished to visit 
Europe, and desired me to manage his 
business during his absence. This I 
agreed to do. I now concluded to fol ow 
Bro. I.’s advice, and try what his God- 
prepared slavedriver could do. To this 
end I made arrangements with a colored 
Baptist minister to preach once a month 
on the plantation. He belonged to a 
master who permuted his slaves to work 
on the Sabbath to make money for them¬ 
selves, whenever they had the opportuni¬ 
ty of doing so. He was therefore satis¬ 
fied, when I agreed to pay his slave two 
dollars and a half for each Sabbath that 
he preached for me. Having lived near 


two years and a half on this plantation 
before, and the slaves having been dissat¬ 
isfied with the overseer that succeeded me, 
while the master was displeased with both 
overseer and slaves on account of short 
crops, the slaves were glad to see me 
come back. They knew my mode of 
management; consequently I had less dif¬ 
ficulty in getting a crowding business 
done, than I should have had ou any 
other plantation. But it is impossible to 
mix slaved riving and the merciful con¬ 
ditions of Christianity together. I made 
another large crop on this place, and 
when my employer returned from Europe, 
Mr. A. told him that he had better con¬ 
tinue to travel, and let me manage his 
plantation. My employer answered that 
I was a good cropper, and took good care 
of the property, but I had 1 u ned his 
slaves by bringing religion among them ; 
that it would take considerable flogging 
to whip it off his place again; that he 
would not own an infernal praying psalm¬ 
singing nigger if he could get him lor 
nothing; that is, if he could not have the 
privilege to whip it out of him. Tnis 
gentleman told me that he was educated 
purposely for au Episcopalian minister. 
If more ministers were sent by the Head 
of the churcb, in place of beiog purpose¬ 
ly educated by their parents’ desire to 
send them after the fleece, we should 
doubtless have fewer pro slavery Rever¬ 
end Doctors. 


CHAPTER XV. 

A Martyr Spirit. 

During the time that I was living on . 
this plantation, a circumstance came to 
my knowledge such as under ordinary 
circumstances it would be impossible lor 
an outsider to know any thing about. It 
was stid by one of old, “Give me a ful¬ 
crum to rest my lever upon, and I can 
move the world.” I say, “ Give me the 
whip, and the one-man power, and I can 
defy any outsider to kuow what is going 
on wilhia my gag-guarded slavedom; 
and it some Paul Pry should question my 
slaves, they wou ! d tell him, “ Massa, dat 
is white folk’s business.” 





40 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


Mr. S, who lived some six miles from 
the plantation which I managed, was a 
member is good standing of the Metho 
dist church. He was a married man, and 
had a beautiful young wife. He also 
owned a handsome and intelligent mulat¬ 
to female slave, whose husband belonged 
to other owners. This slave was a Christ¬ 
ian without a doubt, gifted and powerful 
in prayer, and a beautiful singer. But 
her master was human, and no more, 
therefore his church should not have 
trusted him with unlimited power over 
defenseless females, for fear that he might 
be led away by divers lusts. That church 
should have given the female and her 
parents power over her own virtue, and 
then the pastor might have presented his 
flock to his Master in a much less demor¬ 
alized condition than I fear will now be 
the case. The beauty and intelligence of 
this Christian slave was too much for her 
slave-driving master’s strength. He made 
improper offers to her, and she resisted 
them. He threatened her, and she told 
him that she feared God more than man. 
He flogged her, and she complained to 
her mistress. She was then sold to Mr. 
U., a near neighbor of mine, for one 
thousand dollars cash. This separated 
her from her husband, as her new master 
forbid him to put his foot on the planta¬ 
tion. Mr. TJ.’s slaves told me that their 
master took liberties with all his female 
slaves, not excepting mothers, daughters 
or sisters ; and I had good reason to be¬ 
lieve them, for I was as well acquainted 
with his place as he was himself. The old 
man knew but little about sickness, and 
frequently requested me to assist him 
when any of his slaves were seriously ill. 

I thus became well acquainted with his 
doings. This Christian slave woman had 
now jumped from the frying pan into the 
fire. Pier new master did his utmost to 
seduce her, by treating her a little better 
than the other slaves; but finding that 
this plan failed, he began to threaten her, 
and bade her remember that he had 
bought every pound of flesh in her body, 
and could use it as he pleased; he had 
bought every drop of blood that circu¬ 
lated in her veins, and had paid down 
the hard cash for it, consequent y he had 
a right to let it out of her with that whip. 


The poor slave Was seemingly weak and 
defenseless before her master, and his 
bloody lash ; but her eyes had been open¬ 
ed, and she knew that those who were 
for her were more than those who were 
against her. Yes, he that appeared as 
the Fourth, when the three Hebrew 
children were untouched by the flame, 
was with her then; he that shut the 
mouth of the lions could restrain that 
lash; he who opened the heavens to 
strengthen the first Christian martyr had 
revealed his presence to that Christian 
slave, and she answered calmly, “ Ye3, 
master, you have bought my body, and 
my life’s labor belongs to you; but,” said 
she, looking up, “ my heavenly Master 
has purchased my soul with his own 
precious blood, and it belongs to him ; 
my virtue is my own, and I am command¬ 
ed to keep my body a pure temple lor 
the living God to dwell in, and I leel his 
presence with me now.” Her master 
gave her up, and tempted her virtue no 
more, and what is astonishing, did not 
flog her for resisting him. But he used 
to curse the Christian slaves to me, and 
say that they would as soon die as not. 

Her husband, who was a favorite slave 
of t his master’s, after much importunity 
got his owner willing to purchase his 
wife, if Mr. U. would sell her for the 
same money that he paid for her. He 
then sent a note to Mr. TJ. by his slave, 
saying that it would accommodate him 
very much, if he would sell him his favor¬ 
ite slave’s wife. The husband, greatly de¬ 
lighted at the prospect of soon getting 
her back again, carried his master’s letter 
to Mr. U., who told him that he never 
sold slaves, and that it might be good for 
his health to leave his place as quick as 
possible. Some of the slaves had told 
him to call upon me, on hU way home, 
because the owner might listen to me, if 
he could get me to take up his cause. 
The poor heart-sick husband accordingly 
came to me, and it would, I think, have 
influenced even a pro slavery divine, to 
have seen and heard that poor slave beg 
and plead with me, as his only hope of 
persuading his wife’s master to sell her. I 
told him it was true that Mr. U. never 
sold slave, horse or dog; when he had 
once got them, he kept them till death 






Inside Views op Slavery. 


41 


took them from hira; then he knew, as 
well as I did, that it was a ticklish busi¬ 
ness to interfere with a master about his 
slaves. But I promised to use any influ¬ 
ence or opportunity which I might have, 
in his and his wife’s favor. When this 
Christian slave woman supposed that all 
prospect of ever returning to her husband, 
or even seeing him again, although they 
were only six. miles apart, was finally lost, 
she took it so deeply to heart, that her 
health began gradually to fail. Her mas¬ 
ter named it to me, and cursed all Christ¬ 
ian slaves bitterly, saying that if she had 
been a dancing nigger, she would have 
taken up with one of his nigger men, and 
would have forgotten her husband long 
ago; he would see all the Christian slaves 
in hell,- where they belonged, before he 
would ever purchase another. After 
some time, he asked me to examine his 
Christian nigger, but in language too 
gross for me to repeat. I did so, and 
was satisfied that it was fretting about 
her husband that affected her health. I 
told her master that he had better keep 
her out of the dew mornings, give her 
tonics, and cbeer and raise her spirits as 
much as possible, otherwise he would be 
very likely to lose his thousand dollars. 
He then told me that her husband’s mas¬ 
ter had offered him his money back for 
her, but he did not like to sell a nigger 
when he could avoid doing so, for there 
were always dissatisfied slaves that want¬ 
ed to be sold in hopes of bettering their 
condition, and who, if they had any pros¬ 
pect of succeeding, would run away and 
torment their owner till he was glad to 
get rid of them. I advised the old man 
in this case to make hay while the sun 
shone, and save his pocket; for very like¬ 
ly her husband’s master might back out 
from his previous offer, unless he accept¬ 
ed it at once. Shortly after I learned that 
her purchase had been effected, and she 
sent me her thanks for having frightened 
her old master’s pocket feeling, which 
was the only tender spot about him. 

That beautiful and sweet-voiced singer’s 
harp now hangs upon the willows. But 
this will be only for a time, and then it 
will be again restored, to sound forever 
in heavenly mansions. 

I once heard this Christian slave deliv¬ 


er an exhortation at the graveyard, after 
the death of one of her fellow slaves, 
which would have shamed many a rever¬ 
end pro-slavery doctor. There she stood, 
a poor, crushed, defenseless slave, but 
strong in her heavenly Master’s strength, 
while she poured out a stream of simple 
eloquence as with a tongue of fire. She 
sometimes pointed her hand towards 
heaven, and directed her fellow slaves to 
look there; then pointed to the new 
made grave, and told them to look there. 
She told them that her Jesus had con¬ 
quered death, hell and the grave, not for 
himself, but for them , poor slaves as they 
were, if they would break off their sins, 
and accept, for their Master, him who is 
the resurrection and the life. “ Yes,” 
she exclaimed, “that dead slave shall 
hear his voice ; he shall come forth from 
that grave, and go tip yonder to judg¬ 
ment, and my Jesus will be the Judge. 
Then come, my friends, come men, come 
women, come children, come all, and be 
reconciled to that Judge while you are 
living, and then you shall conquer death 
and hell, and rise from your graves to a 
glorious immortality. Rise slaves? Ho, 
you shall be kings and priests to God 
and the Lamb forever. But remember, 
my friends, when old master tells you 
that if you finish gathering his cotton by 
Christmas, he will give you a full week to 
yourselves, then if you don’t finish it by 
Christmas, you must work all that week, 
and he will give you no time; to it is 
with this heavenly Master, you must do 
his will, if you expect to receive his re¬ 
wards. And then, my friends, if you only 
try to do his will, you shall be taught ol 
him, and made to know his will, and his 
Spirit will be the witness within you that 
you are his, and are doing his will. There 
is no darkness, no night in him; and if a 
cloud hides him for a moment from his 
own, it will only show him the brighter, 
when it has passed and gone over.” 

And is it possible that this poor down- 
crushed slave’s dear Jesus is now the 
head of the pro-slavery church, and lead¬ 
ing on that church to crush and prosti¬ 
tute his own little ones? No, it is not 
possible; he was afflicted in all that poor 
slave’s afflictions, and he never afflicted 
himself by leading on those oppressors 





42 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


lie never riveted her chains, nor fastened 
her feet in the stocks. 

While I was living on this place, Mr. T., 
a near neighbor of mine, (two or three 
miles distant is called near, in that settle¬ 
ment of large cotton plantations,) told me 
that he was going to introduce me to a 
brother Baptist. Mr. S., he remarked, was 
a tolerably good Christian, but he was 
particular hell among niggers. Mr. M., 
a Baptist brother who had but recently 
joined the church, gave one of his slaves 
a most cruel flogging with a carpenter’s 
hand saw, which he handled with both 
hands. About the same time an over¬ 
seer run one of Judge L’s recaptured fu¬ 
gitive slaves to death, and the second one 
came very near dying, while bringing 
them home from the parish jail. These 
cruelties still go on while I am writing, 
and while the readter is perusing these 
sketches. 

I called on a plantation which was man¬ 
aged by a Baptist slavedriver, and from 
his well known driving qualities I have 
no doubt that an old slave, his cook, had 
good reasons for forming the 1 olio wing 
opinions of my religion. On commencing 
conversation with her, she asked me what 
’ligion I ’longed to ? I answered, “ The 
Baptist.” “ Oh, lor, massa,” exclaimed 
the old slave, “ if you ’longs to dem Bap 
tis, I braid you is not got much ’ligion. I 
don’t ’tend to ’suit you, massa, but I is 
plain ole nigger, when I talk ’bout ’ligion, 
dat I is. When ’ligion is got no bressed 
Jesus in it, den it is cold an’ dead ; but if 
Jesus is in it, den it love white folks, an’ 
it love black folks. Den it is not cruel, 
massa; true ’ligion not cruel, like dis 
Baptis ’ligion.” The slaves raised on 
the plantations generally speak broken 
English, having learned from the old 
Africans. 

In conversation with another old slave, 
he gave me the following reasons for not 
understanding much about religion: 

“ One preacher come to preach on ole 
massa plantation, an’ I go liar him berry 
glad. At fust he talk berry good, an’ 
say how much God love us po’ slave. 
Cause you see, massa, da white folks done 
say dat how God has made nigger for 
slave; dat make us sorry, an’ we ’spose 
dat how God not love slave. Last, he say 


dat how God is berry glad if slave serve 
ole massa berry good ; not like eye slave, 
to watch ole massa, but to serve ole mas¬ 
sa like if we serve da Lor’ hisseff; den he 
is glad as if we serve hisseff. Dat ’stonish 
dis nigger, I tell you, massa, dat it did, 
’cause 1 ’spose dat if God know all tings, 
den he knowhow mean an’ cruel ole mas¬ 
sa is to us po’ slave. Den I get up an’ 
left dat preacher quick, dat is trufe, mas¬ 
sa ; dat is reason 1 not know much ’bout 
dat ’ligion you talk ’bout, ’cause dat is 
white folks ’ligion.” 


CHAPTER XYI. 

Preacher George finds lie cannot Serve 
Three Masters. 

No Christian, who takes a calm view 
of the outrageous circumstance I am 
about to relate, can fail to be convinced 
that slavery is an anti-christian abomina¬ 
tion. Watch those slaves as they are 
marched around the slave-pen for exer¬ 
cise ; the men first, then follow the boys, 
after them the women and girls. They 
are all well dressed, for the same purpose 
that a horse-trader trims up his beast for 
sale. Their faces are greased with tal¬ 
low, to hide the ashy appearance of age 
and sickness, and not untrequently, as it 
is said, their gray hairs are dyed black to 
deceive the purchaser. The trader has 
given them all a new age; some must 
tell the purchaser that they are live 
years younger than they really are; oth¬ 
ers will likely stand ten years below their 
real age. They are also instructed as to 
what they shall answer the purchaser 
when he questions them about their form¬ 
er health. Instructions are given to the 
females which I will not disgust my read¬ 
ers by repeating. A gentleman arrives 
at the slave-pen, and the slaves are order¬ 
ed to form into line and dress. They 
know their places, and form in the or¬ 
der described above, when marching 
around the circle. Do you see that no¬ 
ble-looking old slave, with a mild, digni¬ 
fied countenance ? That is preacher 
George, who is fifty years of age, but 
has been instructed to call himself forty- 
three. The purchaser now walks slowly 








Inside Views of Slavery. 


43 


down the line-, and closely inspects the 
older class of' slaves; at length he stops 
opposite the preacher, and asks the price 
of that old nigger. The trader answers 
that he is a sound, healthy slave, who has 
never been abased, and is under forty- 
three years of age, and his lowest selling 
price is nine hundred. “A full price for 
an old nigger,” answers the purchaser; 
“let me* take him aside and examine him 
more closely.” “ Fall out of line and 
take the gentleman to the inspection 
room,” say s the trader. The old preach¬ 
er leads the way to the room, where he 
strips for examination. Reader, did you 
ever see a man examine a horse before he 
makes the purchase? If you did, then 
you can judge of the close inspection of a 
slave whose value is that of several horses. 
All passes very well until the purchaser 
asks the preacher to give him his true age, 
and bids him remember that if he should 
tell a lie, and deceive him concerning his 
age, he will take it out of his old hide. 
The old preacher has been preaching the 
same master-serving doctrine to his fel¬ 
low slaves, for a quarter of a century, 
that his brethren, who ordained him to 
preach the Gospel, taught him. But he 
is now caught in their unscriptural snare, 
and feels astonished and confounded, in 
view of his situation. lie stands in the 
presence of his heavenly Master, and dare 
not tell a willful lie. lie stands in fear of 
his s’ave-tradmg master, and dare not tell 
the truth ; and he stands in the presence of 
hiin who he expects will be his iuture mas¬ 
ter, and who threatens his old hide should 
he deceive him. u Come, you old rascal,’’ 
says the purchaser, “ out with it, sir, and 
don’t hatch any of your infernal lies.” 
“No, massa, I cannot lie,” answers the 
preacher, “ because I fear God more than 
man, and to tell you the truth, I am about 
hlty years of age, or over.” The pur¬ 
chaser now returns, and olfers the trader 
considerably less money for the preacher, 
and tells him the nigger is over fifty. 
The trader contradicts him, and swears 
that the old nigger does not want to be 
sold to him, and has therefore told him a 
lie about his age. They cannot agree 
about the price, and the purchaser crosses 
over to the next slave-pen. Night has 
come, and the banjo, the fiddle, and the 


dance have ceased. The best looking 
female slaves have made their bed on the 
floor, in the trader’s sleeping room. The 
old preacher is now told to shell off his 
clothes, and stretch himself on the floo?. 
Two or three stout slaves are ordered to 
take hold of him, and the trader swears 
that he can whip more master-serving 
doctrine into him in half an hour, than all 
the preachers in his church have been 
able to preach into him for the last half 
century. 

It would he useless to follow this old 
preacher through all his trials on the 
cotton plantation to which he was sold. 
He was placed under a driving overseer, 
who compelled his wife, (much younger 
than himself,) by fear of the lash, to yield 
to his lustful desires. Preacher George^ 
grumbled too loud about this wrong 
treatment, when the overseer determined 
to teach him passive submission to the 
powers that be. But the old preacher 
dodged him, and ran away. He was 
found by a neighbor, a few days after¬ 
wards, lying dead in the swamp. Id 
was supposed that some hunter had 
met with him and ordered him to 
stand, and that on refusing to do this, 
the fugitive had been shot dead in his 
tracks, like a great many others who are 
met with in the woods. 

Shortly before I left the South, I heard 
Mr. P. tell a crowd of slaveholders and 
overseers that his employer, Mr. F., had 
whipped religion off his four large planta¬ 
tions ; that one of his preachers, who was 
a good fiddler before he made a profes¬ 
sion of religion, had been furnished with 
a new fiddle, and told by his master, 
that whenever his overseeer ordered the 
slaves to dance, he must grease his elbows 
rosin the bow, and give them music of a 
lively kind. Several of the company 
swore that Mr. F. was perfectly right in 
doing so, because fiddling and dancing 
made the largest crops of cotton, and 
nigger religion led to secret combinations 
and dangerous insurrections. I remark¬ 
ed that we boasted of having Christianiz¬ 
ed more Africans than all the missiona¬ 
ries sent to Africa; but how could we 
Christianize Africans, if we shut the light 
of Christianity out of their souls ? Hea¬ 
then and Mohammedan nations expected 








44 


Inside Views of Slavery. 


* their laboring classes to comply wiih the 
ceremonies, feasts and lasts of their re ig- 
ions, and why should we act worse than 
they ? If we enslave their bodies, we 
have no business to shut the light of hea¬ 
ven out of their souls, when it is not ne¬ 
cessary for us to do so. One of the gen¬ 
tlemen asked me if I could prove that an 
infernal black nigger had any soul? I 
answered that this was .an admitted fact, 
and it would be for him to disprove it. 
He swore that he could very soon do 
that, and then went on to show that ere 
ation was a continued chain of links, that 
the negro was the dividing link between 
the human race and the ourang-outang, 
and was no more than a brute beast, 
made to cultivate the ground for the mas¬ 
ter race. I then reminded him that we 
had a law in our State which would pun¬ 
ish as a felon the man who should com¬ 
mit an unnatural ciime with a beast, and 
askjd him how many gentlemen there 
were in that company that would not, ac¬ 
cording to his reasoning, be liable to be 
sent to the State prison for ten years at 
least. This question raised a laugh among 
the company, and they made the Red River 
slaveholder stand a treat for all present. 
They afterwards began to discuss the sub¬ 
ject among themselves, and not only 
found all present guilty, but found a true 
bill against every white man in that 
neighborhood. 

I have no evil in my heart against any 
man in the South; indeed, I feel more at 
home in that section of country, and have 
generally found better friends there, than 
anywhere else. But when the church 
proclaims slavery to be good, and only 
good, and when the reverend doctors of 
the northern church repel the charges of 
cruelty which have been justly urged 
against slavery, the abomination that has 
made the church itself a bed of adultery 
aud fornication, I should be guilty before 
God, if I did not give my simple evidence 
against it. There are hundreds of me¬ 
chanics in the free States, who have been 
employed on southern cotton and sugar 
plantations, that can confirm all I have 
said, and more. I admit also that I could 
have given some bright-side views of sla¬ 
very, such as Mrs. Stowe and Northrup’s 
“Twelve Years a Slave” have done; but 


| that would have been useless, because it 
would not assist the crushed or crushing, 
or make them any better or better off; 
and I am willing to affirm that I have 
never been acquainted with a slavehold¬ 
ing professor ot religion, that bore Christ¬ 
ian fruits, who did not mourn over the 
great evil of slavery. I remember that 
when “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was first pub¬ 
lished, a merchant in my neighboihood 
brought on a box of them for sale. lie 
had sold but a few copies, before he was 
ordered to box them up, and speedily 
send them back again to the North. I 
heard an old slaveholder, who had been 
raised in that section of country, swear 
that the dog was dead, and they might as 
well bury him, whenever a white man was 
forbidden to read any book or paper pub¬ 
lished in these Uuited States. “Talk 
about the picture of one Legree,” said he, 
“why the country is full of the real live 
critters a:l around us; there, there, there,’’ 
said he, as he pointed with bis hand to 
their location; “ and there is not a slave- 
driver, or a slaveholder who drives his 
own slaves, in Louisiana, but has flogged 
more or less slaves to death. Why, ^ou 
call me a free nigger master, but I lost a 
fine slave myself, who died shortly after 
I had given him a flogging lor running 
away, and I always shall believe that he 
died from the effects of that flooding.” 

OO o 


CHAPTER XVII. 

My Last Experiences in Slaveland. 

When leaving the South, I met, on 
board tbe steamer, a Mississippi Baptist 
slaveholder, with whom I had a long con¬ 
versation on the subject of slavery. He 
told me that he could not make the con¬ 
ditions of slavery harmonize with the con¬ 
ditions of Christianity; that there were 
fifteen or sixteen slaveholding members 
of his church who held the same opinions ; 
that when the church declared that slav¬ 
ery was an evil, to be got rid of some 
time or other, their consciences were 
more at ease upon the question, but now 
that a large portion of the church declar¬ 
ed that slavery was a blessing to be per¬ 
petuated, their daily experience gave the 







Inside Views of Slavery. 


45 


lie to such declarations, and constantly 
kept these things before their minds; that 
his slave property came by his wife, there¬ 
fore he had no power over it except such 
as his wife gave him by her power of at¬ 
torney. She was a kind mistress to her 
slaves, however, and there is no doubt 
but she would have consented to liberate 
them, if the church had not declared that 
i was no sin to hold them. He said that 
himself and wife frequently discussed the 
subject between themselves, but she lov¬ 
ed her children, and could not believe it 
would be right for her to deprive them of 
the property which she had inherited 
from her father. Thus the church had 
built up a support on which the slave¬ 
holding members could rest, and feel that 
their selfish interests were secure. He 
then told me of some of the cruelties 
which professing Christians were constant 
ly committing upon their slaves, especial¬ 
ly one of the deacons of the Baptist 
church, who was a good neighbor, and 
seemingly a good man in other respects. 
But he loved the dollars, consequently 
he crowded his slaves, and provided for 
them badly, and unfortunately was very 
passionate in managing them. This caused 
the slaves to run away from him quite 
frequently ; and it w r as almost impossible 
to recapture an intelligent fugitive in his 
neighborhood, without putting the dogs 
on their trail. The deacon would conse¬ 
quently call upon himself and other neigh¬ 
bors to assist in the chase. He never 
did like to hunt the slaves with dogs, yet 
he could not well refuse the old deacon, 
when he asked his assistance. But in 
the last chase which he took, the fugitive 
failed to climb or get out of the way of 
the dogs, and when the hunters rode up, 
they found their victim torn in a most 
shameful manner. After they had beaten 
the dogs off, this gentleman declared to 
all his neighbors present, that he had 
taken his last dog chase after a fellow- 
creature, and every slave he had might 
go, if he could not recapture them with¬ 
out using such means. 

“The wicked world a deadly chase on deacons 
once began, 

But now the ciiurch is changed, and deacons chase 
their brother man.” 

I have seen fugitives shamefully torn 


by the dogs when they failed to climb 
out of their reach. I had a neighbor, Mr. 
O., who kept a pack of dogs trained for 
the purpose, one of which broke out of 
his jard, and cut the throat of his valu¬ 
able slave in a few minutes. 

It may be interesting to the reader to 
know the mode of training these hounds, 
whifch, when properly educated, will no¬ 
tice neither fox nor deer trail, but only 
the trail of a negro. The trainer selecis 
a litter of pups from a good-nosed, intel¬ 
ligent breed of fox hounds. He then pre¬ 
pares a proper yard, having a shelter in 
it, where he keeps them close, and per¬ 
mits no slave to visit or feed them. 
When they have attained sufficient age 
and knowledge to notice those about 
them, and to revenge themselves on any 
tormentor, some of the largest negro 
children are daily called to teaze them, 
by pulling their ears and pinching them, 
till at length they begin to hate their 
tormentors and pant for revenge. The 
trainer then supplies each hound with a 
neck collar, or strap, to which he secures 
a rope, so that he may prevent the young 
hounds from biting the children. When 
they are of sufficient age to begin to 
trail, or follow their game by the nose, 
the boys, who have been tormenting 
them until they hate the sight of a negro, 
run a short distance, and then climb a 
gate or fence, so as to be out of reach. 
The distance is increased as the dogs im¬ 
prove in trailing, until they will follow 
their victim to any distance through 
fields, woods or swamps, unless by taking 
the water the fugitive foils them and they 
lose his trail. This, however, is some¬ 
what difficult for him to accomplish, un¬ 
less in an extensive overflowed swamp, 
such as the one where Northrup made 
his escape. I am acquainted in that sec 
tion of country, and am satisfied that his 
“Twelve Years a Slave ” gives a correct 
view of things in those lower regions, 
where the whole people seem already 
God forsaken and dwelling in outer dark¬ 
ness. Should the fugitive, after taking 
the water, soon leave it again, the hounds 
would strike his trail afresh, as they hunt 
both sides of the lakes, bayous and slues, 
for miles, unless the hunters fear that 
their dogs, in taking the water, will fall 







46 


Inside Views of Slayery. 


a prey to the alligators which swarm in 
those streams. Bat the fox-hounds are 
cowardly, and a resolute fugitive might 
beat them back and make his escape. To 
overcome this difficulty, the slave hunting 
gang train a few savage curs, to run with 
the hounds by sight, and assist them in 
securing their human prey. 

My visit to the North was under the 
following circumstances : Finding there 
was an opportunity to liberate several 
slaves, who were the children of their 
masters, if some one in whom the owners 
had confidence would attend to it, I of¬ 
fered them my services gratis, provided 
they would pay my necessary expenses. 
It was arranged that I should first take 
one of these children, a fine boy of about 
twelve years of age, to Ohio, liberate 
him, and put him to a proper school in 
the best location I could find. While 
traveling around in that State, I was sur¬ 
prised to find a large portion of the peo¬ 
ple opposed to liberated slaves settling 
among them. This wa3 the principal 
cause which led me afterwards to join the 
free labor cotton movement, which I sup- 
osed would be a means of killing slavery, 
y opening up the way for a large emi¬ 
gration to Africa and other countries, 
■where the colored man might escape the 
pressure which the white race will always 
bring to bear against him in this country. 
At length I arrived at Xenia, Ohio, where 
the Rev. Mr. French had just opened a 
colored college. I was much pleased 
with this gentleman, and especially with 
the neighborhood around Xenia, where I 
found much less prejudice against color 
than I had found in other places. From 
this place I wrote to an old slaveholding 
friend of mine in Louisiana, that I was 
fully convinced God had never made the 
colored race for abject slaves ; that I had 
here found colored men who were more 
intelligent and much better educated than 
either him or myself; and that such facts 
as this did more to convince me that 
slavery was wrong, than Hammond, Cart¬ 
wright, Estes, Fletcher, and all the host 
of pro-slavery preachers that might be 
added to the list, could do to convince 
me of the contrary. 

When I returned to the South, expect¬ 
ing to bring up the rest of the children 


according to previous arrangement, I 
found that money was scarce, and the 
children could not leave until the follow¬ 
ing spring, before which time I left lor 
England. Several of them have'since 
been brought up to Xenia. One of the 
parties, Mr. D., bad changed his mind 
before my return, and swore that the 
black Republicans were increasing too 
fast in Ohio for him to send his children 
there; that they should be slaves for life, 
and their descendants forever, before 
they should be shoe-blacks for black Re¬ 
publicans ; that he had given their moth¬ 
er for wife to a fine nigger he had lately 
purchased, and she, being young and 
healthy, would produce him a little nig¬ 
ger every year and a half, or two years. 
These would pay all the expenses of rais¬ 
ing, by the time they were fifteen years of 
age, and would then bring him one thou¬ 
sand dollars each, cash down, which would 

be a d- sight better business than 

keeping her to raise his own niggers, and 
then liberating and sending them among 
the black Republicans at his own expense. 

I learned that the Rev. Mr. N., of the 
Methodist church, had ordered his slaves 
to recapture or shoot one of his neighbor’s 
fugitive slaves. He gave them his gun, 
but the fugitive refused to be recaptured, 
and the preacher’s slaves shot him down 
in his tracks. A wicked old slaveholder^ 
in the neighborhood told me that he would 
never permit his driver to recapture any 
slaves who* belonged to that murdered * 
slave’s master ; that preacher N. was as 
much a murderer as if he had stretched 
hemp for his crime ; and that his brother, 
a member of the same church, was the 
greatest amalgamator in the neighborhood ' 
and seduced all his young female slave* - 
as they became of sufficient age. D urine 
a conversation which I had with Mr. S. 
who was also a member of that church 
he openly and boldly defended, concubin 
age with the female slaves, that is, if th< 
parties would confine themselves to one 
I disputed this outrageous opinion, ant 
when he found that I was too hard fo 
him, he remarked that he was not so weL 
posted up in the Bible as I was, but con¬ 
fidently referred me to Dr. A , who stood 
high in that Methodist church. I thanked 
him, and remarked that I preferred to go 






Inside Views of Slavery. 


47 


to the Gospel, where I found that I was 
advised not to associate with a brother 
who was a fornicator. 

I had heird that the Rev. Mr. S. had a 
colored Bible-class in his church; this as 
tonished me, as I was well aware that the 
slaves could not read. I therefore in¬ 
quired of one of the colored members of 
that church, who told me that they com' 
mitted a few Bible passages to memory ; 
that their preacher received the prosti¬ 
tutes and concubines of the master race 
into their church, much against the will 
of the true Christian colored members ; 
and that he had recently divorced his fe¬ 
male slave from her husband, who be¬ 
longed to other owners. The ground of 


this divorce was, that the husband had * 
refused to stretch and hold hi3 wife, while 
her enraged mistress flogged her. The 
poor man begged her mistress to wait 
until she was cool, and then if his wife 
was guilty of any fault w’orthy of being 
whipped, he would stretch and hold her. 
But the enraged preacher’s wife ordered 
him to stretch her at once, or to leave 
her premises forever; and the reverend 
gentleman told his female slave that she 
might take up with another husband. 

Stand for the right, through thick or thin; 

Let rogues behold their shame and sin. 

Why fear the frowns or threats of men, 

If truth sustain my humble pen? 

John Roles. 


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